Act natural

( Monday, Sept. 23, 2002 12:40 am )

>Almost really normal

I wish I had my hat back. I bought a striped winter-type hat on clearance in Miss Selfridge's (or possibly Top Shop?) when I was in London, back when I was 17. Then last year I was staying in my parents' and aunt and uncle's new old cottage and it was so cold that I wore my hat to bed, and sometime in the night it fell off, and I forgot about it, and my aunt threw it away along with most of the rest of the contents of the house. The demise of the one pound hat. My aunt brought me a new hat back from Italy, so I suppose I should be content. Some people don't have any foreign hats, you know. Can't be too particular.

Today Landlady Ellie asked me to babysit her six month old for a few hours since she had a migraine. I agreed immediately, but only because I knew Juney was around to supervise me, and to instantly comprehend the look of wild panic in my eyes as Ellie handed over the kid. People seem to think that any person of the female persuasion instinctively knows how to heat bottles and support the head and what not (I'm always going mental about the need to support the head. What age is it when this is necessary? Have I been mislead?) but I don't know anything about babies. Meanwhile, today's baby-wrangling was yet another undercover milestone for me, and as usual I was pretending to be cool and in control while mentally stressing out. Life for me is not like life, it's like a big theater improv in which I impersonate an adult. It's like I'm on Whose Line, and Clive Anderson is going, "Now, Almostreally, when I ring this buzzer, you're going to be an incompetent left in charge of an infant." Bzzzt! Nevertheless, me and Baby Boy had a real bonding experience. I bought him diapers and took him for walks around the room and amused him with ingenious changes in position and accompanying noises (things which did not amuse him included holding his arms up and making him say "Hello Philadelphia! Are you ready to rock?!" and reading him the first chapter of Moby Dick). Man, does that kid not like Moby Dick at all. I was trying to tell him that the beginning part with Ishmael is really funny, but he wouldn't listen. Juney wasn't into it either. The important point for me, though, is that taking care of an infant in an appropriately maternal way, insignificant as it may seem, is yet another moment of validation for me this year, a moment in which I realize with some relief that I am a normal person after all, and can do the things that normal people do. Similar would be kissing a boy, and having a boyfriend, and, back in the day, getting my period (I was 16.) I am such a late bloomer that it drives me somewhat mental to think about it.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do tomorrow. I have a few things to take care of, but the most important charge is buying us some beer (with our babysitting profits--haha!). I thought about buying some on the way home from CVS today, but I decided that getting diapers and getting beer should really be two separate trips, just for form's sake.

Also, Landlady Ellie persists in not knowing who is Junebug and who is Almostreally. I've been trying to think of a pneumonic (sp?) device to help her keep it straight, but I may just have to get used to being "June." This past summer, an acquaintance of my father's misheard my name the first time we met, and I answered to "Andy" from him all summer. I kind of liked that name anyway.

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