Her passport didn’t make it through in time for her first meager trip at eight weeks old, across the border to Canada. We just argued her way across the border. Then returning was trickier. Border patrol was unimpressed with our birth certificate and social security card. “There are no photos here,” the woman at the booth said. “How can I know if this baby is the baby you say she is if there’s not a photo of her to confirm her identity?” We looked at her. Eventually her supervisor let us through. It had to be acknowledged, that picture or no picture, no one could identify the baby, except for us.
Money and babies
My mother takes the chicken — when she began to locomote, she ceased being a puma and became a chicken — out with her one evening. The two of them attend a dinner held at my mother’s synagogue, in the basement, one of these organized-by-age dinners, this is the over-forty social group, which means that most of the people who attend are over sixty. The chicken walks around the table, carrying her winter pants here and there, offering them to diners, rescinding her offer, and more. After the dinner, my mother tells me that she should charge $1,000 a day to bring the chicken to a nursing home, because a baby offers so much happiness and healing, being near a baby is good for one’s health, it is much better than blue algae or Prozac — it is amazing.
The chicken’s dad then said to my mom that Yes, he agrees. In fact, that is his take on babysitting. That you charge people $20 an hour for the privilege of being with the baby. A baby is a goldmine.
Everything they said was true, and yet also, we know, not the case.