The Stretch Mark Club

Chapter 3: A Smile is Worth a Thousand Dirty Diapers

Before I had children, I was embarrassed to pee in a public restroom. Now I have conversations about baby poop with random strangers in the middle of Walmart.

Jasmine

4 Weeks Old…

Everett and I have been debating over Zoe’s smiles for a week. I’m hell bent to see the first smile, but every time I point one out he tells me it’s gas. I tell him my daughter doesn’t have gas...she’s a lady.

This morning, Everett and I packed Zoe up for her first road trip. It was time to drive her the ninety miles to visit her grandparents--my parents. To say I’d been dreading this visit would be an understatement.  Nevertheless, we got up bright and early and packed up every toy Zoe received at her baby shower and stuffed it all, along with her, into the back seat. I don’t think she sees them as much more than colorful blobs at this point but we had no idea what to expect. We do now.

Let me tell you what to expect. Stopping every fifteen minutes. Diaper change. Nurse. Diaper change. Nurse. Rock to sleep. Diaper change. Nurse. Toy. Diaper change. Nurse. Either that, or arm yourself with Ibuprofen and earplugs. Somehow, though, we did make it. It took us twice as long as the trip took us before we had her, but I wasn’t in what you’d call a rush.

We pulled in and my parents were standing on the front porch waiting for us. “Do you think they’ve been standing there since I told them we were coming last week?” I asked Everett. He shook his head at me in amusement. I thought I saw Zoe smile as I unbuckled her from her car seat and gasped. Everett pursed his lips and shook his head at me from the front seat. I narrowed my eyes at him in the rear view mirror.

“When she smiles for real,” he said, “it will be her whole face, not just her lips.”

As soon as we got out of the car, I saw the tight-lipped smile on my mother’s face. She hated that I’d had a baby and at the unthinkably young age of twenty-seven. Part of me felt pleasure in knowing that if she wanted to see her granddaughter, she’d have to get over herself. The other part of me just wanted to cry. Everett caught the look that passed between us and gave me an encouraging nod in her direction.

My parents greeted Everett warmly, after they fawned over the baby, of course. My parents always liked Everett. I guess even my mother had to have one good quality. It’s hard not to love Everett, though. He and my dad had bonded over cars the first time they ever met, and he slipped into the family fairly unnoticed from there.

I should take a minute to explain things about my mom, lest you think she’s the Wicked Witch of the West, or that I’m an overgrown ungrateful teenager. It all boils down to one thing, really--I grew up and my mom didn’t. At the age of five, I surpassed my mom’s capability for compassion and understanding of responsibility. This is the woman who took me to the salon and made me sit quietly in a chair for hours, at five years old, while she had her hair and nails done. At six, when my dad was out of town on business, she left me at my aunt’s house for days so she could go out with her friends. At seven, she taught me to do the dishes so she’d never have to do another one in her life. And this is the woman who, when I told her I was pregnant, said, “Say goodbye to that body, darling.” She always told me I’d understand her better when I became a mother but now that I am one, I understand her even less.

Mom took the baby from Everett immediately and invited us in. With Zoe in her arms, she offered us drinks. I tried to take Zoe back but she refused, saying “You do remember I’ve done this before, right?” Yeah, and look how well that turned out, I thought. You raised a woman who is decidedly the opposite of you--a woman who plans and puts responsibility first to a fault. The only thing I’d done in my entire life that wasn’t written in pen in my planner was what she held in her arms, and the last thing I needed was her dropping Zoe in attempt to prove that she had once been a real mother. I talked her into letting me get the drinks.