Hobson's Choice
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Baby Pressure Cooker
I live in a constant baby advertisement, and Eleanor is the marketer. She wants to watch baby videos all the time (the Bear in the BBH where Tutter babysits his cousin, the Reading Rainbow featuring an OB/GYN). She wants to play with baby toys. She wants to visit babies and play with them (She says "awww" just like the rest of us). She constantly talks about brothers and sisters. She worries about characters in books who are "all by herself."
She wants a baby, and I feel myself succumbing to that desire, too. In part, I know that she's still trying to understand the baby who died. She still talks about the miscarriage on a weekly basis.
She also just wants a sister.
And I find myself wanting to give her one. It seems that, after all, life is hard, and we just keep trying, even after experiences which would seem like a rational person would say "I don't want to go through those again for any potential benefit, no three weeks in the NICU, no years without sleep, no losses that can't be recouped."
A Hospice social worker once told me that humans never give up hope, although the things we hope for change. Perhaps this is our hallmark, to foresake what seems like reasonabless for the joy of hope, something coded into our genes like the urge for babies.
9:07 p.m. - 2004-09-01
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