Confusion, was too much of a stretch for Karbo’s literary agent, who said that no male sales representative would ever try to sell a book with that title) begins with the sentence, “I am a terrible mother.” If there is a mother alive who can pass up a book that begins with the line “I am a terrible mother” I would like to meet her. I would like to be her. Karbo then launches into a razor-sharp, insightful story of friendship, pregnancy, new motherhood, and social commentary – all of it as relevant and true today as it was twenty years ago.
One of my favorite moments is when a socialite, strolling the aisles of the local upscale market, spies a baby girl saying, “Oh, my, and who have we here? Do you smile? Are you a smiler? Aren’t you a stunning brute?’”
This is what I love: the utterly ordinary interaction of a passing adult with a baby girl, then the abrupt left turn of “Aren’t you a stunning brute?” Classic Karbo.
Since the publication of Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me, Karen and I have seen each other through kids (two biological, two step), divorces (two), remarriage (one), true loves (two), deaths of fathers (two), publication of books (many for her, a few for me), and life in Portland.
“For a woman, the true advantage of marriage is not having regular sex, but having an on-site partner with whom to debrief.”
Not so surprisingly, the advantage of having Karen Karbo as a friend is exactly the same.
I AM A TERRIBLE MOTHER. I LOVE MY DAUGHTER, LOVE her so much I’m amazed I actually have to hold her in my arms, that she doesn’t just stick to my side, my heart heavy as a black hole, dense with love, trying to suck her into it. I love her like this, then, minutes later, can’t wait to get out of the house, leaving her behind. I’m told all mothers are like this, more or less, and are all wracked with guilt because of it.
The week I found out about Mary Rose, my beloved Stella Marie was six months old. She had black stick-straight-up hair, blueberry eyes that would find their way eventually to a less exotic shade of hazel, an abiding affection for the decorative moldings of our seventy-year-old house.
She liked to gaze at the corners of windows and doors, reach out as if to grab them, then wag her hands excitedly, like a palsied lady trying to open a wide-mouth jar. Her basic look was one of consternation. She was not a silly baby, even though I’d been known to make her wear a bonnet. She is perfect. The world’s cutest human. Really the world’s cutest human.
And yet, one needs a break. All I wanted to do was go to the grocery store.
“I love Stella, I’m just not interested in changing her diapers,” said Lyle, when I asked if he might watch her for an hour. Made me feel as if I was asking for the keys to the car and ten bucks for gas.
Interested in? We’re not talking a PBS documentary on marsupials here, Lyle. She’s your daughter.”
“Here’s something I read that’s kind of cool—did you know that newborn kangaroos find their way into the pouch completely unassisted by their mothers?”
“Don’t do the changing-the-subject thing. Please?” I rolled the portable dishwasher as close to Stella’s bedroom doorway as I could without disconnecting the nozzle from the kitchen sink. The Perfect Wonderment had been up seven times during the night, but still wasn’t sleepy. The dishwasher was my secret weapon. The whir-whoosh whir-whoosh of the water sloshing around was better than any lullaby. I could hear Stella in her crib, doing one of her Stella monologues in which she seemed to fall back on a word that sounded a lot like intaglio.
“Are there even any dishes in there?” said Lyle. He stood in the kitchen frowning at the dishwasher, as if it were one of his computer problems, his collie eyes made slightly larger by his glasses. He’d lost weight since Stella came, mostly because dinner now was us standing in the middle of the kitchen, eating whatever straight from the refrigerator: cheese, peanut butter on celery, Nestle chocolate-chip cookie dough straight from its yellow tube.
“If you don’t want to help, don’t criticize.”
“I’m not criticizing, I’m just saying. It’s a waste of water.”
“If Stella sleeps, and I get to take a nap some time before the new year, then it’s not a goddamned waste of water.”
“I thought we agreed we were going to lay off the profanity. You know, in front of Stella. And I do want to help. I said I wanted to help.”
“As long as it’s something convenient, you’re all for helping. If it’s a gorgeous day and Stella needs a little air, you’ll walk her around the block. That’s your definition of helping. It’s like when you’re playing on the computer and you tell someone you have to get off and go baby-sit. Baby-sitting is what you do for kids that aren’t your own. It’s what you do when you’re fifteen and want a chance to make a few bucks and see what there is to eat in someone else’s kitchen. You don’t babysit your own daughter.”
“Well …” He pinched the end of his nose, something he always did when he wondered if he should say what he was thinking … “guys do.”
“You know what it’s like, what you do? And probably all men for that matter. It’s like the difference between a deaf person signing as a means of communication and a lovely, well-intentioned hearing person signing as a show of solidarity.”
“You’re starting to go off, Brooke.”
“I am not going off. Why do you say I’m going off whenever I’m trying to make a point?”
“Why don’t you just go get the turkey?”
“Why don’t you just go get the turkey.”
“I thought that’s what this was all about. You wanted to get out of the house and you wanted me to baby-sit Stella, and I asked—just asked, so sue me—when you’d last changed her diaper.”
“So you could be sure you wouldn’t have to change one. Look, you think I enjoy changing diapers?”
“Yeah, I do.”
Okay, he was right. I did tend to rhapsodize about the wonder of Stella’s “projects.” Steam and cut a carrot into bite-sized bits and a mere twelve hours later there they are again, bright and square as ever, cradled in her diaper amid an aromatic little dollop of guacamole-ish doo. I don’t expect the mailman to find this amazing, but I’d like to think that Stella’s own father would take an interest. Is that asking too much? I already know the answer.
The dishwasher did the trick, as I knew it would, and I went out to buy the turkey. Donleavy’s Market is beloved by every impractical person in a ten-square-mile radius. It sells huge, pale bars of French soap and bottles of olive oil for every occasion. (Lyle and I used to like to joke that “Extra Extra Virgin” should be repunctuated to reflect modem sexual reality—Extra Extra: Virgin!)
When I pulled into the driveway behind the market, I saw the lavender Mowers and Rakers truck parked near the back fence. It was hard to miss. It’s a civic institution. The sides were smartly painted with a Gauguin-inspired profusion of red passion flowers, pink hollyhocks, marigolds, irises, and cosmoses, green vines
