Tripp and his mom were napping when I first forayed to the mecca of box stores for new parents: Buy Buy Baby. Clutching my list on which I had scribbled a few simple items like night light, diaper bag, organic baby wipes, kimonos and breast pads, I froze in the doorway in the face of bewildering arrays of... BABY STUFF. Miles of baby clothes on circular racks, a parking lot sized space of jog strollers, walls of car seats from infant carriers to convertible carriers to booster seats, rolling shelves, aisle upon aisle; what looked like striped baby circus tents hung from the ceiling. I felt instantly nauseous.
"Can I help you?" a cheerful woman piped up.
I may have muttered something unintelligible, but mostly I was backing away.
"Do you have a list?" she tried.
I nodded.
"Can I see it?"
I held it out.
She found me a cart and guided me to where newborn kimonos - what Tripp's dad refers to as Jedi Knight shirts, because they snap cross-ways across the baby's chest - could be found. I took a breath. They came in white, three to a pack.
"N-night light?" I stammered.
"Right over here." She pointed to a shelf, excused herself, and vanished behind a stack of pink musical potty seats that twinkle when baby tinkles. There were yellow star night lights, vintage Mickey Mouse night lights, nights lights with 72-hour ultrasonic humidifiers, night lights that talk and tell time. I chose something jungle-ish with a monkey and giraffe on it, and fled.
I called Katherine in front of a floor-to-ceiling display of designer diaper bags. A video extolling the benefits of temperature-controlled baby whirlpool spas played softly nearby.
"Huminahuminahumina," I stammered into my cell phone like Jackie Gleason from The Honeymooners when Katherine answered.
"Mom? Where are you?"
"D-diaper bags," I said.
"Mom? I trust you completely. Whatever you choose will be fine."
After I finished up the remaining items, having consulted a variety of mothers on the subject of nursing pads and grooming kits, and having bypassed "Boogie Wipes," but scooping up a few bottles of hand sanitizer, I ventured by elevator to the second floor. Katherine had mentioned needing a rocking chair. A saleswoman pounced the instant the elevator doors slid shut behind me.
"New grandmother?" she demanded.
"Why, yes."
"Lunatic on the second floor!" she shouted.
Several people who didn't look much like new parents were seated in what were termed "rockers." One man held a venti-sized cup from Starbucks and was reading the New York Post. A woman was doing her nails.
"Can I help you find anything?" asked the saleswoman who had denounced me as a crazy person.
"I think I'm done," I said, overwhelmed by clusters of jungle-themed baby furniture sets, baby swimming pools and masses of stuffed monkeys.
"I nearly got you one of those Baby on Board stickers," I told Katherine later.
"I'm so glad you didn't," she said. "Have you seen those stickers that people paste on their rear windows that tell everyone on the road who's in the family? There's a mother, a father, two children, a parakeet, a dog, a gold fish, whatever."
"Yeah, they're really dumb," I agreed. An open invitation to home invaders I fretted, with some of my usual paranoia. In my day, had we been sticker people, our family station wagon would have boasted cutesy stickers depicting a mother, a father, three girls, two dogs, numerous cats, a few ducks, gerbils, hamsters, rabbits, languishing baby turtles, newts, and a horse named Sam.
"Once, I saw a car with 13 cats on it," Katherine laughed. "Can you imagine?"
"No," I said. "Can I hold the baby now?"
*
PS: By the way, no one, not even a lunatic grandmother's first grandson, needs this. Am I right?
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