This morning I woke up (I’ve found that the morning is when I usually wake up. True for you?) and found myself thinking about the virus again, which made me immediately wish I could go back to sleep! Unfortunately for me, once I wake up, I usually can’t go back to sleep, so I sighed, and got up.
I was weary about today before it even began. I know I am lucky to actually have food, but I just feel so tired of it all, even eating. I thought, I’ll “have” to eat breakfast again, just like I have been doing most days. I’ll have to eat lunch. Again. Dinner. Again. And, thanks to Covid, I will have to wash laundry again, since we do laundry every time we go out “in the world,” as we’ve come to think of it, and yesterday we went out in the world.
Ah, but yesterday, my friends, was not just another typical, not another usual. Yesterday, happily, was not another “again.” It was blissful, a marshmallow cloud of lightness and air. Better than avocado toast, or the prettiest Instagram photo of a latte. (Did I say that right?). For the first time since Covid, I got to see my niece, Baby B, who is now 20 months old. It was heavenly. She is heavenly. Her laugh is contagious, but for the fact that you don’t want to laugh at the same time she is laughing! That’s because you only want to hear her laughter, so beautiful a sound it is. Her smile is contagious, and looking at her, there is no holding back, no muting of a response possible. She just smiles, amazingly, and then you must, too. It’s not even optional; it’s more like a primal, basic instinct reaction. (Without the knives and murder). She smiles; you smile. Simple.
Everyone says that about their person, their new baby, their niece, or their whomever. “They are the most beautiful…or smartest… or…” blah blah blah, fill in the noun and/or adjectives of your choice. So, yes, I am one of those aunties who boasts about my beautiful, smart, funny niece! You would, too, if you had her because she is positively extraordinary. Ah, but you can’t have her, because she is mine. My niece. As in, not yours. Mine. However, I am willing to share her in the sense of describing her beauty, her smiles, her joy-bringing super power. My brother Sam and his partner, Patricia, have said that Baby B’s super power is joy. And so it is. To see her is to live happily again, to have hope for the future. Just a glance and your heart feels bigger and brighter. Better. On the other hand, there is no such thing as just a glance at her because you absolutely cannot limit yourself to only a glance. She is stunning. As a feminist (which by the way, simply means that I believe women and men should be paid equally for the same work, have the same rights–vote and stuff–and generally also be considered to be people), I also hate if the only descriptor of a baby is how beautiful she is. It is not the only descriptor for Baby B; it’s just the most obvious one. I could give you many others. Magnificent. Radiant. Heart-exploding (but in a good way). She’s really smart, too. You get the idea.
“Feminism is the radical notion that women are people.” {Marie Shear}
This quotation is often mistakenly attributed to Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler.
I’ve had other nieces, five of them in fact. (Baby B is the sixth in a long list of nieces. I’m sure that I was stunned by their beauty, too, by their intelligence, too, especially when they were babies and not yet mildly annoying teens). My two (and only two) nephews, not so much. They are also good, beautiful people, but we don’t look at boys quite the same as we look at girls, do we? That’s just how it is. It’s called the “male gaze.” The male gaze means that even girls and women have learned to look at other girls and women through a lens that admires them as art. Sadly, if we aren’t careful about it, that can mean we see women and girls not just as art but as art objects. That is a topic for another time (or not), but right now I don’t care about debunking the concept of the male gaze; I just want to gush about my niece, Baby B, because she is beautiful and joy-bringing. (Actually, I’ve done all the gushing I’m going to for now, because after reading this to proofread it, I realized I am about to change the topic from Baby B to other stuff).
The idea of babies is unbelievable, really. There is nothing. Then people hump and one of the people gets pregnant, and if they decide to have and then keep the baby, and if they succeed in that, which isn’t as simple as it sounds, then there is a baby. That idea, “then there is a baby,” is a whole host of rubbish right there, because it sounds ridiculously simple, sort of like “Oh, let’s do laundry today.” Not so simple. Let’s not even talk about giving birth. OUCH!
That notion, “then there is a baby,” is the most absurd abbreviation of: a person gave birth to this needy, demanding stranger who screams and cries and poops and pees and eats and has to be taken care of and washed and held and put down for naps and picked up again and changed (lots of times) and have laundry done for it (again, lots of times) and so on.* Now you’ve gotten through just part of one morning, and it all has to be done…again. Wow! I’m exhausted just thinking about it! *(Deliberate “ands,” in case you weren’t sure).
So, my hats off and my admiration to all the women who have babies (and to the men, but I confess, it’s to a much lesser degree. If that’s sexist of me, well, too bad because women (um, white women) didn’t have the right to vote until 1920 in this country. (They won the right to vote in 1919 (aka 19th amendment), but couldn’t exercise it until 1920, according to Wikipedia and a million other sources. I didn’t look at a million other sources, exactly, but I did look at a few to confirm. Then realized I was accidentally looking at women’s suffrage in Canada, too, but that piece of my accidental “research” about Canada doesn’t make much sense for my narrow point, specifically about the United States, does it? Anyway, in the US, women technically won the right to vote in 1919/1920. However, black women really couldn’t vote safely in a lot of cases until 1965 (or still) because of all the other bullshit like violence at the polls, poll tax, gerrymandering, lots of other barriers to voting, blah, blah blah. My point is this: Women of color eventually had the right to vote, too, (kind of). I am not trying to dismiss the very important idea of all women, including women of color, finally getting the right to vote, it’s just that this was a longer detour than intended from my point of amazing women feeding babies, doing laundry and changing diapers filled with poo. Then doing it again.
Yep, that was real. 
That was real, too!
Today when I woke up, though, my morning thoughts were not filled with dread exactly, but more with a kind of sad Covid-weariness. I was ecstatic to see Baby B yesterday, but I think the visit gave me a sort of joy-hangover. A happy-sad roller coaster. You know, it’s that bitter-sweet “best meal of your life ever…” but then it’s over. Even your dessert plate is empty and your dessert coffee is gone. That’s why I was sad. Tired out. Today I faced the idea that I had to start over, a new day, all three meals, taking a shower, doing laundry again, brushing and styling my hair into a “messy bun,” then giving up on that after a few failed attempts (it’s a lot harder than you might think to make a messy bun) and finally just putting it into a pony tail since I don’t have any Zoom meetings today. I’m not going to wear any makeup today, either. Again.