Life’s full of surprises, so pack lots of supplies
By God, they’re feeding the baby guacamole. He’s smeared it around his face the way babies do, never in the mouth, just in the vicinity of his mouth. If any of it enters his mouth, it will be entirely by accident. Rare as a hole in one. Rare as love that lasts.
“Should he really be eating guacamole?” I ask.
“It’s mashed peas,” my wife says.
“Likely story,” I say.
“Here, hold him a second,” she says.
Now I’m in trouble. They’ll pass this new baby around like a love note for hours, and the moment they pass him to me he hurls up huge vats of baby formula and some form of stomach cheese. Plus guacamole. Salsa. Flan. Whatever else they’re feeding babies these days.
It shoots from his tiny mouth as if spring-loaded, onto my shirt and into my chest hair, where it forms a type of Krazy Glue I can’t seem to remove.
“Here, hold him a second,” she says and out it all comes.
He’s like a gag baby, this kid. He doesn’t need a dad, he needs his own hazmat team.
“He feels so much better now,” my wife says after he leaves his lunch on my chest.
“Don’t we all,” I say.
Some mornings, I take him out for coffee, just the baby and me out in the world, with 30 pounds of paraphernalia: formula, wipes, a pacifier, a bib, extra clothes, a blanket, a hat, a stroller, a baby carrier, baby powder, Vaseline, sunscreen, antibacterial hand soap and two bottles.
And that’s just my stuff.
“Wanna take a ride?” I’ll ask him, and he never says no.
I’m fairly certain the Apollo astronauts went to the moon with less than we take for a 30-minute trip down the boulevard to buy a cup of coffee. If we ever spend the day at the zoo, we’ll have to rent a Winnebago.
“You ready?” I ask.
“Never more so,” the baby says.
They have these car seats now, developed since our last baby, that you just snap into a base, then snap out when you reach your destination.
And the baby formula has changed also. Remember how you used to heat it up in the microwave? Not anymore. You mix and serve at room temperature. Like red wine or airplane food. Today, having a baby is almost easy.
“You OK back there?” I ask, looking at him in the backseat.
“Fabulous,” he says.
On the way to the coffee shop, we pass a gas station. There’s a young man filling his new Suburban and combing his hair with his fingers, over and over, probably worried about how he’s going to pay for this thing. Not the new Suburban. The tank of gas. Roughly the same price.
“It used to be a lot cheaper around here,” I tell the baby.
“When?” he wonders.
“About a month ago,” I say.
“Likely story,” he says.
At the coffee shop, I buy a scone and a large coffee. There’s an old couch where we sit and watch the cars pass by on the boulevard. Young couples in Subarus, wiggly and aroused. Older couples, still as statues, looking opposite ways.
As the cars pass, I tell him things. Father-son things. About March Madness. And April Fools. How you can never figure how life might turn out. How the surprises make everything else worthwhile. For example, I tell him how the other morning, I walked out to get the paper and found a bikini top in the front flower bed.
“Hey, we’re growing bikinis,” I muttered to no one in particular.
“That’s mine,” said the lovely and patient older daughter, home for spring break, which apparently is taking place in our frontyard, while I am sleeping.
“I dropped it on the way in,” the older daughter explained.
“Better than on the way out,” I said.
“It fell, I guess,” she said.
Likely story.
She’s back for spring break, with her college ideals and dorm-room morals, back for spring break for another test of our unconditional love.
“Maybe you could talk to her,” I tell the baby, finishing my scone and eyeing another. “You, she’d listen to.”
“Me?” he wonders.
On the way home, he falls asleep in his car seat. Dreaming of bikini tops and guacamole, most likely. It’s life’s surprises he likes the best.
Chris Erskine’s column is published Wednesdays. He can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.
