My baby
By Simon Barget
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I won’t go anywhere without my baby. I have a special harness and she slots right inside. I say she but I’ve never checked for her gender; the ‘she’ is a pronoun of convenience. The harness is like a pouch. I slide her in so that she dangles towards me, her stomach touching mine, her legs eagerly flapping for something to rest on, reaching out for terra firma, for the tactile pleasure of solid ground. Over the years my baby has hardly grown. She has aged but has pretty much remained the same size. She hasn’t outgrown her harness for instance; I haven’t needed a new one. It’s the same harness I had when she was tiny, a couple of straps I tie round my back, a piece of cloth arranged with two slots for the legs and supporting the soft buttocks, this piece of cloth is the same one I have always had, it’s just been washed a few times.
When she is harnessed she faces me but doesn’t necessarily look at my face. If anything her eyes rest above my chest by my clavicle. But I don’t need her to be looking at me to know that she’s there. I simply feel her in the harness. I feel her weight and her fullness, but I can also feel her flesh in contact with mine, through the clothes she is wearing and the ones I’m wearing too. Since she is always harnessed, and since I can feel her, I can never forget she is there. Not for one pinprick. Not for a blip in time. My experience is completely coloured by her. I wouldn’t go as far as to say we are in symbiosis, but that’s how it might appear on the outside. For better or for worse I can never not be aware of my baby.
Now my baby was not something I’d asked for or wanted. I’m not saying I don’t love her because that would be callous. But she was foisted upon me. She was born to me almost out of the blue; I’d had no knowledge of the conception and before I knew it I was on the maternity table giving birth. I say it like it is fresh in my memory but I hardly remember. The memories begin when I started to carry her.
When she kicks, when she cries, when she gurgles or sicks up food, when she passes wind, when she is beset by these violent coughing fits, or when her lips turn a concerning shade of blue, when she flaps her arms about in my face, none of this is particularly comfortable for someone carrying about this baby literally 24/7. I have to endure. Most of the time she is quiet, although some of the time she is asleep, and then suddenly she wakes up and becomes animate, her eyes pop open wide, and the waking moments are a mixed blessing. As soon as she does I’m beset by two strings of conflicting thoughts: amongst the first figures the pleasure of being able once again to interact with my precious little baby, the sheer joy at the reestablishment of our connection whilst the second is dominated by the stark realisation the demands are about to start, the demands for food, but mainly attention, the very specific types of attention she wants and seeks out, the precise way she insists that I look at her, firstly for about five seconds, and then after that the highly sought-out look of inspection, whereby she expects me to look her up and down, touch a part of her body with my index finger, feel about in it as if I’m examining a wart, culminating in me placing my hands down her back requiring me to manipulate my hand in such a way that I can get it down through the tight gap between the nylon fabric of the papoose and her vest top. It is all very bespoke and laborious. If I don’t follow a certain tight-knit procedure, the crying will start, at first nothing outrageous or calamitous but it soon builds up and within a few seconds, she can be screaming and caterwauling so loudly I can hardly breathe.
Yes my baby can be a bit of a terror. But even when she’s asleep in the harness I know she is there. I know that I need to take care of her. I would not dream of giving her away if that were even possible, but the awareness of the responsibility of my baby is something quite pressing and alarming, the awareness that I can never put her down, will never have a moment’s peace, will never be able to reason with her, to agree that she might busy herself with something else for a few moments while I get on with what I need to get on with, all of these background realisations make it more than testing for me to be in possession of my baby.
But as responsible as I feel for my baby, this pales into insignificance in the face of the sense of responsibility I feel for having her in the first place. Even if it wasn’t planned. Even if I didn’t really know she was coming. I feel somehow that it is only me who can be blamed for her existence. I feel that behind it all I must have wanted her in some way, I must have called her forth, it must have been I and no one else who brought about this rather farcical circumstance, a grown man in control of his faculties going around carrying a large baby, a circumstance I rarely see reproduced amongst my peers.
And the moments of pleasure are at best muted. They are not moments of unbridled joy. The pleasure is only the pleasure of realisation, the remembrance that I do have a baby. There are times when our eyes meet and in that meeting a thought is set-off to the tune of: ‘Oh my god, I really do have a baby, and that baby is mine.’ And this thought makes me happy but it is a contingent happiness, contingent, I suppose, upon the value I have already placed on the fact of having one’s own baby. I suppose you could call it pride, but it isn’t exactly that. I lack the requisite pathos for pride.
And as for the sensation itself, without going too deeply into it, it follows the thought and I suppose it could be called pleasure or joy or something like that. But it is not pure. I get this immense rush but even within the feeling there’s a background sense that my body is rejecting it, the feeling isn’t proportional to the moment, it has shaken my inner peace and it seems to me that if I could choose one way or the other, I should favour the serenity of nothingness, the purity of calm over the rush that my pride has brought upon me.
In any event within about two seconds the thrill has passed and the actual pleasure has turned into a bit of a stricture into something that is no better than neutral, not something which can be said to be a kissing cousin of joy. She is no better than a string to a bow.
So I just wish I could put her down, leave her, walk around wherever I happen to be walking just by myself, yes that’s it, I want so desperately to be alone, liberated, unburdened, I want to know again what it’s like to go about this world without a stone on your back. I have tried so hard to uncouple us even for a few seconds and even before she has a chance to start crying I find that I am the one that cannot abide it, I am the one who fails to cope, I cannot face the moment, the feelings it brings up and in every instance I have to put the harness right back on my shoulders. As much as I want that pleasure of having the neck straight and unbuckled, being able to breathe right through the lungs, god if my baby ever knew this, if she picked up on my reservations, I think she would abandon me. So as much as I want my freedom I think I need her more than she needs me.
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