A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far way, I started a blog. You might remember. I think we shared some laughs, you and I. But after a mere 5 posts, I all but disappeared for over a month, and now here we are, having to get reacquainted. The truth is, while some people can juggle an amazing number of things at once, I, alas, cannot. In the past month, we moved for the first time since having children, and I have been buried in a sea of boxes and new school enrollment papers and post office mix-ups and impacted kindergarten classes, and the time just got away from me. I certainly will be back, but in the meantime, lest you think I’ve forgotten about you – or, truthfully, lest you’ve nearly forgotten about me – here is a bit of fluff until I find my groove. This post is dedicated to my friend, Heather R., who now knows definitively that, when dealing with me, flattery will get you everywhere.
When my first baby was 9 months old, I was a stay-at-home mom still trying to adjust to parenthood, my new life, and my still-colicky bundle of screaming joy. I’d quit my job right before the end of maternity leave, and while my side gig as a sleep-deprived freelance writer helped generate some extra cash, it’s pretty hard down-sizing to a one-income family in the Bay Area. Things were tight, so most of the grown-up luxuries went out the window. Which is not to say that I would have had it any other way – we were prepared for the financial sacrifice when we made the stay-at-home call, and colicky or not, I loved that scream machine to bits, and couldn’t bear to leave him. But still. Every once in a while, I’d sit down on the couch in the middle of the day, covered in mashed banana with my hair falling out in chunks, leaking milk all over the front of my shirt because my body still hadn’t figured out how to turn down the spigot, and just sort of daydream about having a conversation with another adult, or getting a pedicure or going on a date night with the husband. Or just taking an uninterrupted shower.
Around this time, Kirk came home from work one day to find me in my usual spot, leaning seductively against the kitchen counter in nothing but a pair of Laboutins and a French maid’s apron, holding out a tray of handmade éclairs. No, I’m kidding. Have you not been paying attention? I was a mess. But he’d spent the day on-site with a client who was the creative director of a magazine, and she happened to mention they were down a warm body for an upcoming photo shoot. The shoot and accompanying article would be about new motherhood, and they needed one more mom-and-child duo to sit for some cuddly shots.
I’ll take a second here to remind you that I really am not one of those people who likes to call attention to herself, and I certainly have never had a love affair with cameras. Or the front end of them, anyway. And now? Now with my crazy lady hair, perpetually puked-on shoulders, a belly like a partially filled water bottle and dark half-moons under my eyes? He thinks I’m going to get in front of a camera now? No way. But then he says, all casually, as if he’s not plunking down the biggest bribe in the history of marital relations, “They’ll have a full spa team to prep all the moms.”
Sold. Get the hell out of my way, husband, I have a photo shoot to attend.
And so it was that I found myself in a sun-drenched studio in downtown San Francisco, listening to relaxing music, draped in a plush spa robe and sipping tea delivered to me by a hot young intern. (I can only assume they hid the Jager bombs because most of us in the room were responsible for small humans whose skulls had not yet fused.) My mom sat nearby holding the young’un while a full make-up and hair team worked their magic. A team, people. I had a team doing things to me. Nice things. Feel-good things. At one point I actually fell asleep sitting upright, while the hair stylist massaged my head. I think I dreamed about rainbows and unicorns.
When the prep was over, my tea cup was whisked away and I was ushered into a changing room with racks full of spanking new gauzy, organic-y, earth mother-y wear, asked to pick my favorite, and then report to the photographer, with babe in arms. After a minute in the dressing room, I poked my head out and offered helpfully, “Sorry, but I think I’m missing a rack of clothing – these are all skirts and pants.” To which came the reply, “Yeah, did Kirk not mention? This is a topless photo shoot.”
Say what?
To this day, I’m still trying to determine whether Kirk knew ahead of time that this was a shoot about nursing moms, and that I was expected to sit for photos while nursing my baby. Naked from the waist up. And let me be clear – I never had any reservations in those days about nursing, any damn where and time my baby happened to be hungry – no, that wasn’t the issue. But topless? In my upholstered, jiggly state? For a shot that would be one of the article’s main, full-page photos? With an extra photo in the table of contents? In a high-circulation parenting magazine? I almost wept with vanity and self-consciousness. There was no backing out without causing serious repercussions, and that nice hair lady did put me to sleep in the chair with her hands of sweet, sweet magic, after all. So I walked on set, dropped the robe, grabbed that hungry kid, threw my shoulders back for a little extra lift, and modeled the shit out of that photo shoot.
And you know what? The thing about those photos? Even with the paunch, the extra 20 pounds, that post-partum line of longitude running down the length of my belly – despite the fact that my son threw up on me once and peed on me twice during the course of the shoot, and that my arms ached from holding him there for 2 hours – here we are, five years later…
