Other brothers, swing-set speculation and scary books

I.

A few days ago, I decided to take Clara on a dry run of the baby's birth. I hoped it might help her conceptualize what was happening to my body and what was going to happen in our family in about three weeks. We went to the Treasure Valley Midwives Center first, because they have a big poster on the wall that shows a life-size, full-term baby en utero. Also, I was hoping someone would be in labor so we could hear some yelling and grunting, and I could explain to Clara the process of childbirth. Alas, no one was in the two birthing rooms.

Next we went to St. Luke's hospital, where I plan to deliver. In the car, I told Clara that Baby Brother would soon come out of my stomach, and she said, "Oh! Then I will get into your stomach."

"Please, no," I replied. "That would be really uncomfortable for both of us."

We took the elevator to the eighth floor, where the newborn nursery and labor recovery rooms are located. Clara is not a fan of elevators, but I wasn't about to walk up eight floors. To keep her mind off her fear, I held her in the elevator and encouraged her to count the floors. A woman asked her, "Are you having a brother or a sister?"

"It's a girl," Clara said matter-of-factly.

"It's a boy," I clarified.

There were only two newborns in the nursery: a sleepy little girl and a little boy who was not amused. I held Clara up to the window while she pressed her nose to the glass and talked baby talk to them: "Deedle, deedle, dee. Leetle, leetle, leetle babies."

After a moment or two, a dad showed up with his little girl and they stood in front of the nursery windows. A woman came into the nursery through a side entrance, accompanied by two nurses. They stood over the disgruntled baby boy and talked.

"Do you have a baby brother or sister in the nursery?" I asked the little girl. She pulled herself up on tiptoes to see through the glass.

"That's my baby brother," she said, pointing to the baby boy.

"Oh, Clara! It's another little girl with a baby brother!" I exclaimed.

"Put me down," Clara instructed, and I let her slide off my hip. She and the little girl, who said she was four, crouched by the wall and compared their shoes. Clara was wearing her dark blue Mary Jane Crocs with a big, rubber pink and white flower on each toe. The inside of each flower was a hard red plastic heart, cut to look like a jewel. The little girl, who was dressed to the nines in a glitter-embellished, hot pink, spaghetti-strapped tank top and white eyelet-trimmed skirt with some sort of petticoat underneath, pink-and-white bracelets and a touch of pink lipgloss, nevertheless wore simple pink flip-flops. Smart, very smart. I always say, never let your choice of shoe interfere with an already-busy outfit.

"I like mine better because they come on and off more easily," said the little girl, demonstrating with one flip-flop.

"I have some of those too," said Clara. "I have a baby brother in my mom's belly. I, I will take him out for you." Her eyes grew wide, and she made a scoop out of her hands and pretended to scoop baby brother out of my stomach to show the little girl.

"When was the baby born?" I asked her dad.

"Earlier this morning," he replied.

"And that's mom?" I asked, pointing to the woman standing with the nurses over the baby's bassinet.

"Yes."

The woman, like her daughter, had long blond hair. She was tall and slim, wearing an ankle-length turquoise jersey dress that cinched in at the waist, perfect make-up and lots of gold jewelry.

"Wow, she looks amazing for having just given birth!" I breathed. She looked amazing in general. I did not look like that after giving birth.

"I did not look like that after giving birth," I said to the dad. He roared with laughter.

"It was a different sort of scenario," he explained.

"Oh," I said. Feeling it was impolite to press further, I thought: Adoption? Surrogacy? Ne'er-do-well relative who accidentally got knocked up and can't be bothered to raise a kid right now? I burned with curiosity, but there are some things you just don't ask.

The woman and nurses were wheeling the baby in his bassinet out the door of the nursery, and the dad beckoned to the little girl. The little girl turned to go, tripped on her flip-flop, and fell to the floor. She hastily incorporated the fall into some sort of jungle dance move, springing to her hands and knees and pretending to be a tiger. Then she stood, dusted herself off and ran toward her dad. But before she got to him, she changed her mind and came running back to us.

"I have to tell you one more thing," she whispered to Clara. Clara's eyes widened again and sparkled, and a funny little smile played around the corners of her mouth. Clearly it was delicious to have someone who was both older and had fabulous blond hair come running to you to whisper a secret.

"He's my baby," the little girl whispered, without even a trace of bitchiness. It was simply a statement of clarification. The baby brother belonged to her and Clara shouldn't be confused about this. Clara nodded sagely and we walked back to the elevators.

II.


A few days later, Clara and I were playing on the playset out back, and she generously offered to take Baby Brother out of my belly. She had been running around without clothes in the backyard, in a state my girlfriends and I call, "naked and feral." She made the usual scoop with her small hands and pretended to shovel Baby Brother out of me and place him on the swing.

Then she wanted to swing next to him.

"What do you think Baby Brother will look like?" I asked her as I pushed her in the swing.

"He will look like a princess," she replied.

"Oh? And what does a princess look like?"

"He will have a long, pink skirt and a long, pink dress."

"And what else?"

"He will look like the Good Witch of the North."

"Like in The Wizard of Oz?"

"Yes."

"And what sorts of things do you think he'll like to do?" I asked.

"Ummmm...Play baseball."

"Won't that be sort of hard in his dress?"

"Yes," she sighed impatiently.

"Why will that be so hard?" I asked.

"Because his dress is so nice. And he will get it dirty."

III.

When she was much younger, like eighteen months or so, there wasn't much Clara was afraid of. Alone, she repeatedly went down the slide at the kiddie pool, the one that's shaped like a dragon with water squirting from his nose. One time she accidentally flipped around halfway down and came into the water backwards. She insisted on sleeping with her door closed and, when we'd inadvertently leave it open, she'd shout, "Hey! Shut the door!" She liked to shut herself in my closet with the lights off and pretend to be a cat.

Then, a few months ago, we started daycare part-time. Immediately her play was enriched. At home, I noticed her doing things we never did together. She pretended to be different farm animals, invented elaborate games involving couch cushion "mountains" and her collection of plastic knight figurines, engaged in deeply-felt pretend dialogue with her stuffed dog, Floppy.

At the same time, she started talking about monsters.

The first of her books to be relegated to the "objects of fear" pile was one called Goodnight Goon. It's a funny parody of Goodnight Moon that involves vampires, werewolves and all sorts of slimy creatures. The monsters, from my perspective at least, are not drawn to look scary. The book is supposed to be funny.

One night when her grandparents were visiting, Clara told them, "I scary of this book." So they brought it downstairs. In the context of the living room couches and throw pillows, wooden hutches full of china and knick-knacks and framed family photos--in other words, Grown-up Land-- the book seemed less offensive to her.

But the day her grandparents left, Clara told me the book needed to go.

"What do you mean?" I asked. "Do you mean we should throw it away?"

"Yes," she said firmly. Soon after, she was distracted by a puzzle she liked, and seemed to completely forget about the book. I casually placed it on a shelf. The shelf was just tall enough that she couldn't see the book (although it was still within her reach).

Awhile later I was doing some crafts at the kitchen table when I heard her muttering about, "This scary book" and rustling around in the cupboards. I didn't give it much thought until I went to empty the trash, and this is what I found:

I put the book away in a safe spot.

The next day, I was upstairs folding laundry when I heard Clara chatting with Floppy about, "this bad, scary John Pig." Sure enough, when Simon later went to throw something away, he found, John Pig's Halloween in the trash. The book is about a piglet named John who's too frightened to go trick-or-treating with his friends. He stays home, and a kitten witch crashes into the jack O' lanterns on his front porch, comes inside and teaches him how to make all sorts of scrumptious Halloween treats, like persimmon-plum pie and pumpkin mousse. Then the kitten witch invites a bunch of her friends over--all lovable monsters with gross-looking spiders hanging off them--for a Halloween party. John Pig and everyone else end up having a blast.

Clara used to love the book.

The Wicked Witch of the West from Clara's Emerald City play set has since joined the offending books, and I have an inkling that a set of Groucho Marx glasses with wiggling eyebrows and a set of wind-up, chomping teeth from last Halloween will soon be added to the "scary" pile.