Melanie McCarthy
When I was pregnant
with my son, one of my favorite pastimes was daydreaming about the nursery. I
would flip through catalogs and browse cribs and bedding Online when I was
supposed to be working. What color would I paint his room? What’s the theme?
Pastel lambs or fi sh in primary colors? Maybe I’d paint a mural. I would gaze at
all the beautiful Pottery Barn bedrooms, dreaming.
Finally, after
countless hours of analyzing
colors, styles and safety ratings, we chose a natural crib and
a simple safari bedding set. I couldn’t wait to launder everything and set it all up, as a
fi rst offi cial act of motherhood. I lovingly tied bumpers to the sides of the crib,
with care and hope, dreaming of my innocent bundle all cozy and safe in his
crib. Little did I know that in the next town over, there was a gray-haired woman
up in her attic with her own ideas about where her new grandbaby would sleep.
Pat and Al (short
for Alice) are a rare couple who bring new meaning to the term “reduce, reuse,
recycle.” I am pretty sure that “Al” has never bought anything new in her entire life.
Each thing in her house, down to the spoons and hand towels, come from
somewhere and have some story. Some of her furniture comes from the Civil War era,
she often boasts. Everything you see and look at has a memory and she saves
everything that is even remotely nostalgic. So it is only natural, that when news
of an arriving grandchild hit, they would head “up the attic” and unearth the
CRIB. I really should have been warned.
I was led upstairs
to the spare room, with Al excitedly clapping her hands together in anticipation
of the unveiling. I turned the corner, really unprepared for what I was about to
witness. Down the hall, she explained all about this old wrought-iron crib. It’s
been in her family for generations. The neighbors even borrowed it for one of
their babies and had taken it to get “dipped.” I asked her to explain “dipped” and I
wish I hadn’t. This is when you strip off lead paint and repaint it with
something else that is not-so-deadly apparently. I am feeling better
already. I hold my breath as I prepare to meet the CRIB. I hold back a little wimper when I see
it. It has narrow iron spindles, slats about 8 inches apart it seems, and it actually
starts to grin and snap at me like Jaws. I jump back and notice that Jaws is dressed in the
sheets my 36-year-old husband used to sleep on complete with his very pillow and musical donkey. I
am beginning
to wonder about the fine line
between nostalgia and crazy.
I smile and nod and
hold my panic in as I continue to stare around the room. She has taken out the car
seat that looks like a plaid canvas picnic basket, a walker that has visible metal
springs leering at me, an old pram carriage and Grampy’s vintage bibs. I tell her
that all of this is lovely, and I spend the next year of my life fi ghting privately
with my husband so that our son is not subjected to the antique nursery, never
mind go for a car ride in the picnic basket. This is just one of the many generation hurdles
I have had to leap over with Pat and Al since I became a mother.
Now that my two
children are in twin beds, I wonder, what am I going to do with my crib? In
December of 2010, Congress passed a law banning the resale and manufacturing of all
drop-side cribs deeming only cribs that have rigidly attached sides the safe
ones. Well, I was shocked to learn that my crib is a relative of Jaws, with its
drop-side being another potential death threat to a baby. I was chatting with a couple at
a party who said that they couldn’t even donate their fi veyear-old, $1,500 “bella
whatever” because no one would except it. They had no where to store it, so
they just threw it out.
Huh? My children’s
crib is dismantled, leaning up against the wall in the attic. I can’t bare to give it
away (no one would accept it anyway); I can’t bare to use it again, so there it sits,
dormant, waiting to horrify my future daughter-in-law, I guess. I even saved their car
seat.