THE CRAZY ONES

Dear Spike:

Maybe it was crazy. And maybe that was the reason that we decided not to tell anyone at first. And maybe that’s the reason why, after we found out it really wasn’t crazy, we still opted not to share it with any but our closest friends. Because maybe it was really crazy and we just didn’t know it was crazy, which — if you think about it — is what really makes something crazy.

Wait... I digress.

Back when we were painting your room — four or five months before you came, I think it was — I arrived at the end of the line of elephants that we’d painted, marching around the walls. I stood there, on top of the step ladder, with an artistic epiphany, of sorts. The rest of the pachyderms, spaced evenly apart, followed a simple pattern:

Brown elephant. Red elephant. Tan elephant. Brown elephant. Red elephant. Tan elephant.

The last one would have fit the pattern — keeping it going on and on and on, around the room and around again to eternity.

I looked down to your mother. “Could you hand me the yellow paint?” I asked.

“Yellow?”

“I want to do this one tie-died.”

She agreed. We’re nonconformists. Or at least, we’re as nonconformist as you’ll find among young, urban, middle-income, single-mortgage professionals. Well, close anyhow.

In any case, we wanted to instill in you a spirit of nonconformity. Because, you know, maybe Spike just wasn’t enough.

So above your closet door — still marching in formation, mind you — is one tie-dyed elephant. Even though it’s sort of hidden, up there, it’s one of the first things people notice when they come to see your bedroom. I like that. More than being a nonconformist family, I like people to think that we’re a nonconformist family.

Or maybe not.

Hmmm. This seems like a good place to get back to the subject of crazy.

Turns out I’ve found it really difficult to disclose the fact that we’ve opted to raise you a bit unconventionally. There’s perhaps nothing in life people are more judgmental about than child rearing. Everyone has an opinion about feeding, holding, talking, sleeping, kissing, soothing and singing. About the only subject we all seem to be able to get together about is diapers: Everyone agrees that babies wear them.

Except, your mother and I learned a few years back, that isn’t really true at all.

Back when your mom was attending Western Oregon University, we lived in a little apartment, above a church on the corner of First and Main in the town of Monmouth, just a block down from the college. Like a lot of colleges, Western had a museum on campus. For whatever reason, it was an arctic museum. Arctic. Right — like Polar Bears and Eskimos.

Which brings me back to diapers. Eskimo babies, we learned one weekend while on a tour of the museum , don’t wear them. Seems it’s a particularly bad idea to let your babies sit around in their own pee when you live in an igloo. I’ve never had hypothermia myself, but this seemed to make sense to me. And so the Eskimos potty train their babies — when they’re two weeks old.

You, as they say, weren’t so much as a gleam in our eyes at that time. But it did get me to thinking: If the Eskimos can train their babies to potty on demand why on God’s Cold Earth don’t we all?

And, of course, it turns out that — for the most part, we do. In China and Africa and India and much of South America and quite a few places in Europe, they teach babies not to use their pants as a toilet. And again, this seems to make sense, because really — particularly in places where people live on the equivalent of a few dollars a day — its not like Huggies are a top priority.

So when we learned you were coming, I did a little bit of research. There are a few decent books on the subject: I bought them both, though this really isn’t a matter that requires all that much study. It’s really pretty simple. When you were about two weeks old, I held you over the toilet and waited.

When you peed, I made a noise like a deflating tire: “Pssssss. Pssssssss. Pssssssss.”

And when you pooped, I made a noise like a revving car engine: “Grrrrrrr. Grrrrrrrr. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr.”

It took all of two days for you to get the point. And so long as we remain attuned to your body language and normal patterns (you like to do your stuff after waking up from a nap, for instance) you definitely seem to prefer using the toilet to using your pants.
It’s not quite a “diaper free” lifestyle as the title of one of the books promises, but you have spent entire days in one dry and clean nappy. And on most days, we get by with three or four.

But although this has been one of the most exciting developments of your rearing, we’ve been hesitant to share it with anyone but our close friends and family. Because even though I like people to think we're nonconformists, in this country diapers seem kind of sacred.

Back when we decided to use cloth diapers instead of disposables, we got a lot of “well, you say that now” — even from people who themselves had never tried cloth diapers for their children.

Meanwhile, people with toddlers told us to expect to be “swimming in diapers for years.” And they said it kind of gleefully, which was really weird.

But maybe we are the crazy ones. And I admit, I did for a time fear that we may have sentenced you to a lifetime of Pavlovian excremental responses any time you hear a tire deflating or a car engine revving.

But then this week, your mother’s friend Sue — who was born in China — was present when I was holding you over a bucket, letting you do your thing.

“Pssssss. Pssssssss. Psssssssssss.” I whispered in your ear.

Sue laughed.

“That’s the same sound my mother used to make for me,” she said.

Yup, we’re nonconformists. Just like one billion Chinese, another billion Indians, another billion people on the continent of Africa and a few billion more scattered around the rest of the planet.

And, of course, the Eskimos.

Love,
dad