whip it out, and decide once and for all whose dick’s the biggest? Just get it over with already. All that butt patting and sticking their hands under each other’s asses. Football is more homoerotic than a gay pride parade in San Francisco.”
Dori automatically assumes that I agree with her. I don’t. For the first time I understand what has been happening right in front of me all these years. Maybe because for a few seconds I was close enough to have heard one beat, I can now see how football lets all those ordinary boys show what is in their hearts: They want to be heroes. They each want to be loved and admired for their courage and skill. They want to be the one who saves the tribe. They want to be the hunter who brings home the deer, the warrior who slays the enemy. Or, at least, they want to help the one who does. What is wrong with that?
As we drive away, I wonder what it would have been like to grow up in the polygamy part of the Mormon Church believing that the Lord wants your mom to be one of fifteen wives and that it is holy and righteous that you are going to get married off as soon as you have your first period. To believe that your way is right and that the rest of the world—the normal world—is deluded and doomed to burn in hell, and that the normal world persecutes you only because they haven’t been saved. Or are reading the Bible wrong. Or are secretly jealous.
Then one day, something happens, and you see that everything you were taught to believe your entire life is wrong. You see that the whole time you were the deluded one.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 12, 2010
In the locker room, hands still dripping, I fumble with the lock in my haste to get to my cell phone and see if Aubrey has returned any of my half-dozen increasingly shrill messages. I fish the phone out and, of course, there are no messages. I punch in her number. When, as usual, it goes straight to voice mail, I clench the phone, and my fist hovers two inches from the locker as I fight the impulse to smash it to pieces.
I calm myself and send a text message. Cursing my spastic thumbs, I type, CLA ME NOW!! HV 2 GET $$$ 2MRW!!! MST IMPT DAY OF YR FILE!!!
I peel off my wet swimsuit and am standing naked in front of the locker when a woman in a tankini with a slenderizing tummy panel spots me and squeals, “The boob whisperer!”
I wince and consider not answering. I should strike a blow for the dignity of my profession and ask her to please not refer to me or to any lactation consultant as a boob whisperer. Or even her bosom buddy. But she’s already rushing over, wailing, “Oh, Cam, you are just the person I need to talk to!” She yanks a shoulder strap down, scoops her left breast out of its cup, and holds it up for my inspection.
I can’t recall the woman’s name, but remember her raisin-colored areola and writing “dense tissue” on her chart. A ring of raw, badly chapped skin outlines her nipples.
“Oh, sweetie,” I coo. “Todd does not like whatever it is that you’re doing now.” Even though all the moms become Sweetie, I can almost always recall their babies’ names. I see Todd and his mother together again as they were when I visited her at her house a few days after delivery and found her weeping in despair, and it comes back to me: infant with a small mouth, mom with dense breast tissue.
“It’s painful, isn’t it?”
“What am I doing wrong?” Her eyebrows arch together in anxious pleading. “I’m not making enough milk, am I?”
Kristin. Amazingly, out of all the thousands of names, I recall hers. If only I had that level of command in other areas of my life. Like with Aubrey.
“Kristin, no, don’t stress about that. I’ve seen about a thousand moms a year for the past fifteen years, and do you know how many couldn’t make enough milk? Four. I am not worried at all about your supply.”
Kristin nods, relaxing a bit.
Always looking for the teachable moment, I ask rhetorically, “Todd is not getting a good latch, is he? And so, in spite of your more than adequate supply, he’s not getting full. And he struggles when he nurses. And that