I received my first parenting reprimand today from a total stranger. Having heard such stories from friends who are parents, I have to say it was a pretty gentle initiation into the genre. But still. People, shut up.
I was in the checkout line of a Walgreen's with Daisy. I had her strapped to me in a Snugli carrier, wearing a short-sleeved onesie, pants, and socks. A middle-aged Russian woman with dyed bright orange hair was standing nearby and began to speak to me. At first I assumed she wanted to drown me in beams of approval and admiration because of the cuteness of the baby, as other middle-aged female strangers had been doing during my whole time out with the baby, so I arranged my face into a proud yet modest, beneficent, Virgin Mary-like smile, as befits the mother of such an irresistible urchin. But no! --she was plucking at the sleeve of my downy blue sweatshirt.
"You put this on yourself, right? Why not she?" the woman said sadly, pointing at the baby's bare arms and tsking.
I could have pointed out that I was drenched in sweat and had been cursing myself for wearing the damned sweatshirt ever since I set foot out the door, but as it turns out, snappy comebacks in these situations are harder to generate than one would think. I'd always imagined myself ripping right into the unsolicited-advice-giver, snarling with self-justification and elegantly pointing out the ignorances and hypocrisies sure to be latent in whatever the person was saying. But nothing sprang to mind in the moment, and I didn't want to continue the conversation, so I just re-shaped my "that's right,
I created her" falsely modest smile into one of meek mortification and quietly inched forward in line. When I exited the store, she was standing there and I had to turn the wrong way on the sidewalk to avoid seeing her again, thus adding an extra block or so to my trip home.
As I walked home in the beginnings of a mild rain, noting that drops of water were actually binging and bonging off the baby's head, I wondered if she had had a point. I must make the horribly age-ist observation that women of my mom's generation seem overall to want babies to be swathed in at least four layers of clothing at all times, rain or shine, bundled so tightly that no millimeter of bare skin is showing. And to me, we were generating so much heat from being stuffed together body to body that if anything we were too hot. But on the other hand, sometimes I do forget to dress the baby. "Where do you think we are, Hawaii?" snapped my mother two weeks ago when I came downstairs to greet her on a chilly morning, Daisy in nothing but a onesie. She then noted that my shoelaces were untied.
Sometimes it does not occur to me to dress Daisy fully. I admit it. So many of the wee, darlin', elfin articles of clothing seem...more ornamental than anything else.
I felt sorry for myself so on the way home I bought myself some Skittles gum.
