Mother's Day

Sleeping like a baby...
Oscar and his personal assistants (that'd be Jen and I) spent most of the weekend at various functions related to the wedding of his doting godparents, Patrick and Lizzy (below). It was a fantastic wedding, and we were reminded throughout how grateful we are to have them as friends and godparents of our son.


This being a wedding, he had serious competition in the cute baby department. There was a passel of apple-cheeked cherubs from Cleveland, the couple's ancestral home, and closer to home, Meredith and Leora's little Nadav with the world's most pinchable cheeks and big, searching eyes like floodlights. There was also Lizzy's very pregnant friend Emily, whose glow was so overpowering you practically needed a lead suit to get within ten feet of her.

Meredith, a cantor, and Leora, both classically-trained opera singers, sang an ethereal rendition of an old Shaker song at the ceremony, and we could only imagine the lullabyes Nadav and his older brother, Gilad, get. I'm afraid our atonal warbling doesn't quite stack up. Poor Oscar. He'll have to settle for the occasional tuba solo.

Regardless, our boy got plenty of attention and was perfectly-behaved throughout. He mostly snoozed through the bachelor/bachelorette party, the late-night drinking session Friday and yesterday's ceremony, but was wide awake and charming at this morning's brunch. Lizzy's friend Missy, a pediatrician, pronounced him a beauty, and her other friend, Allison, who used to work in advertising casting babies, said he was star material. Or potential screen fodder for Pampers-pushers, anyway. We're not about to march him off to any casting calls, but it was nice to hear from a professional.

A couple people asked me if we were planning to have any more. We've talked about it, but it's occured to us that Oscar's such an easy baby, the next would have to be a holy terror. Maybe we should quit while we're ahead!

That's not to say the weekend was entirely without challenges. At the reception, in a tony TriBeCa Italian place, I was cruelly reminded of the paucity of changing tables in men's rooms and resorted to an upturned garbage pail. At least I put a cloth diaper over it.

Today is Jen's first Mother's Day as a mother. I got her some nice chocolates, and Patrick made us take a lovely boquet of flowers from the wedding, so we're covered for this Hallmark holiday. But I think the nicest gift came from the cabbie who picked us up late last night on a deserted Greenwich Avenue, even though he had his off-duties on, because it was Mother's Day and she was a mother. We talked parenting and he regaled us with tales of his 2-year-old. I'd guess he was Pakistani. He said he was from a very large family -- six brothers and two sisters -- like most of our immigrant ancestors from the old countries were. He thought he'd like another, maybe two more, but not eight. Sweet guy.

Parenthood has shown us a whole new side of this city. Who outside of Park Slope knew we were in the midst of a baby boom? But it seems we are here in Manhattan (take that, Ruskies!), and there's a lot of parents out there -- a disparate lot of people we now have something, the most important thing, in common with.

Correction: Lizzy has reminded us of the antiwar origins of Mother's Day, which Julia Ward Howe (the Unitarian pacifist and abolitionist author of The Battle Hymn of the Republic) launched in 1870 with these words:

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...

So I guess Hallmark doesn't get credit for that one.