ricochet off my face, gauging the depth of this revelation. Decide if I am joking. They see that I’m not.
“Yeah, Next. It wasn’t Jonestown or Heaven’s Gate, but it wasn’t the Unitarians either.”
I don’t know what it is about the truth, but telling it is like having a noisy generator cranking away in the background suddenly go silent. As always after my big overshare, the barometric pressure in the room drops and everyone listens, really listens, for the first time.
“Nothing was the way I wanted it to be with my first, my only, child. Not one thing was right. If I’d had good help, though, if I’d had me, breast-feeding could have been my one right thing. I am going to give you the information you need, or tell you who can, to make it right for you.”
At first, it made me feel too exposed to talk about myself. Especially the part about losing my husband to a cult. So I tried substituting “another woman.” Even “a man,” but anything other than my own exact, specific, bizarre truth never connected. Never made the pressure drop the way the true, inexplicable, utterly humiliating, nonlinear randomness of life did.
“I’ve been a lactation consultant for fifteen years. It’s a silly job. When I meet people, they either think it’s some tech job or, if they do know what a lactation consultant is, the guys ask if I need an assistant. So I just say I’m a spy.”
Hoodie Boy laughs out loud and a few of the other dads join him. Now we can start learning. Next to truth, humor is the most important element.
“I’m not here to rip on formula. I was formula-fed. I don’t hate my mom. That’s not what caused the obvious emotional scarring.”
They laugh again. This is a good group.
“I’m just here to give information. I’m sure you all have researched the car seat, the crib, and the monitor. Anybody know how much formula costs?”
Lots of shrugs. No guesses. No one knows the answers to any of the truly hard questions. Cribs, monitors, Boppies, organic washcloths—hell, breast-feeding, breast-feeding classes—they’re so ultimately incidental. It’s too late, though, to tell any of these young parents, brimming with the most concentrated, aware love they will ever feel, that of the millions of decisions they’ll have to make as parents, the only irrevocable one has already been made. It was made when they picked a person to have a child with.
“At least twenty-five dollars a can. On sale. Usually it’s closer to thirty. If your baby is average and goes through ten cans a month, that’s two hundred and fifty dollars. Minimum. That’s a car payment every month. Here, I’m going to pass around this wheel. Check it out. Just dial in what formula costs for different time periods.” I whirl the wheel. “Oh, look, three weeks and you’ve got an iPod.”
I walk down the aisle like an evangelical preacher going out to lay on hands and pass the wheel around.
“When I first started teaching, I’d lead off with a big download about immunity and antigens and lower rates of sudden infant death and less plastic in the landfill. All very true and, eventually, I will get to some of that, but since there are whole organizations out there already telling moms they can express world peace, I figure that you’re probably looking for a different approach. So I start with the shiny baubles.”
The teen mom in the back row has taken control of the wheel and is checking out what each day of breast-feeding is worth, as if someone will be handing her a gift bag every time she unbuttons. I think of this girl with her sneering Presley beauty that will turn sloppy, her life ended before it can begin, all because she never escaped Parkhaven, never went to college, and I tilt off balance for a moment. More than anything, I want to speed over to Tyler’s roach coach and free my daughter this very second.
Peninsula. I have to get her to Peninsula.
I yank myself back on track and return to the podium. “Hey, I saw a formula ad the other day that said, ‘Now even more like breast milk.’ You know what is just like breast milk?” I look around the room. “Breast milk.”
A wispy blonde in pink yoga pants, the straps of her sports bra showing at the neck of her top, puts her hand up hesitantly. I know what she’s going to ask just from the way she