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In a suburban Toronto baby store, where I am discovering that the cost of outfitting a newborn is about the same as sending the grown kid to university, I sidle up to a young couple with a $1,200 orchid-tone UPPAbaby Vista stroller.
Dad is texting and elbow-pumping the stroller, from which ear-knifing screams are issuing from a minute, rage-puckered, orchid-coloured face, while Mom compares the $55 Grobag Kissing Rabbits Sleep Sack with the $65 Grobag Trundling Tractor version. They're perfect targets for the Mother's Curse.
"Do you find," I say to the father in my friendliest voice, raising it slightly to be heard, "that you now get what your mother meant when she said, 'One day, you'll know?'"
"Oh yeah, ha ha ha … " says the father, eyes flickering briefly from his screen. The mother looks as if she could punch me.
"Gorgeous baby," I lie, and move off smartly. Feeling good. Feeling fine.
I used to say "remember the Mother's Curse," but that seemed to cause alarm.
Strictly speaking, it did not start as a curse but as a simple prediction, when you as a child began saying "omigod, Mom, I'm not a baby!" in The Tone and with The Look that says not only was this not your real parent, but you'd been abducted by the unhippest, unfairest, most boring alien from a boring unhip galaxy.
What makes the prediction a curse is the fact that, if the child becomes a parent, it will invariably come true.
So here I am, taking it to the street:
To a quarterback-sized father cradling his infant daughter with the tenderness and terror of new parenthood. "Oh yeah," he nods, "I never believed it before.";
To a mother trying to keep her daughters from running off in different directions. "And wouldn't my mother love to see this," she says. "Ainslie! Arianna!";
To a sari-clad grandma whose grown son is swooping his shrieking infant back and forth in its carrier. "Oh yes, my son, now he does know what it means, oh yes!"
I have evolved since the days I imagined myself as a kind of action figure, a disciplining angel meting out justice to child tyrants and succour to a tyrannized public. If a child were imploding and a parent pleading, there I'd be: Step aside, ma'am. This is a job for … BratSmacker.
A renowned restaurant reviewer had written a column deploring fine establishments' intolerance for her toddlers: for little Mimi's tantrums and races under strangers' tables, and wee Jason's game of unrolling all the toilet paper. She actually listed the fine restaurants that welcomed her darlings.
Step aside, maîtres-d’. This is a job for … BratSmacker.
The notion came to me when I was living in Italy, where young mothers were going back to work and leaving their tots in the care of grandmas. I saw a large toddler planted on the sidewalk, kicking his booted feet and screeching like a banshee while his tiny little old nonna, too small to heft him back into his stroller, stood wringing her ancient hands and begging tearfully: “Mamma mia, tesoro, ti prego!!”
Leave it to me, ma’am … il Martello-Monello (the Hammer of Brats).
But that kind of thing can get you arrested, especially today. Evoking the Mother’s Curse, however, is legal and lethal, whether it’s the memory of the simple “one day you’ll know” or the more barbed, “I only hope I’m around when your child gives you The Look/The Tone.” My own mother’s refinement, delivered when I was in the full flower of my adolescence, was: “All I wish you is one like you!”
I wasn’t going to be a mom like her, of course: I would be sunny and reasonable, an adorable friend to my children. My offspring would do the right thing joyously. Imagine my disbelief, then, when people started fleeing as I dined with my son – me nagging, him fidgeting, dawdling, shooting me The Look; my horror at hearing my mother’s voice issuing from my own mouth, shrieking the Mother’s Curse with what was left of my vocal cords.
Okay, but why take it to the streets? It’s the waste – the waste of so much arduously earned wisdom. Because not only do you not dare utter to your adult children the “I told you so” that hovers on your lips: You pretty well have to button those lips forever. Your pearls must become dust in the wind. So now I strew them anonymously before new parents everywhere.
The wheel spins on. Adult children, confronted by their own progeny, repeat The Curse to them and they in turn pass it on. Is not parenthood, basically, punishment for your own childhood?
I am at the dining table with my son and his young son. The kid is fidgeting and dawdling over the last of his greens.
“All right, buddy, one more bite, okay?” my son wheedles. “You want dessert or not? Then finish that kale. In five … four … three … ” His eyes meet mine. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“No, son, no, no, no. No.”
But I find myself thinking seditiously: “Aw, leave the kid alone. He’ll eat when he’s hungry.
Good lord. Did I actually think that?
Step aside, ma’am. This is a job for … GrannyGrounder.
Susan Kastner lives in Toronto.