The Gap Year

by Sarah Bird

  “Hi, everyone. I am Cam Lightsey.” I launch into my spiel and, the way they always do when I step in front of a class, all my worries disappear. I am doing what I do best on earth, the one thing I have no regrets about. After a dozen years teaching this class, I have honed and fine-tuned it like a stand-up act.

  “Welcome to Breast-feeding One-oh-one.” I hold my phone up. “Let’s all practice cutting the cord,” I say, turning my own off.

  “Just by coming today, you all are giving your babies the best start in life they could possibly have.” As I say them, the words come alive and so do I. I become a funnier, bawdier, warmer, wiser, all-around better version of who I am.

  “I’m here because I am exactly the person I needed after my daughter was born, and there was no one like me this far from the city. Eighteen years ago, the choices in Parkhaven were, you could either go the hard-core route that insists you have to breast-feed until the junior-senior prom. Or you go with formula and your kid ends up with a dozen bodies buried in the backyard.

  “I assume that you’re here because, like me, neither of those paths works for you. Maybe you’re here because you’ve heard I’m not a lactation hard-liner, but that I’ll help you succeed at breast-feeding your baby. Maybe you’ve heard that I’m not gonna tell you you have to quit your job or divorce your husband if either one gets in the way of nursing. Or maybe you just heard that, at some time during the class—not saying when—I’ll probably touch my breastesses.”

  The guy in the hoodie grins at his girlfriend: This is exactly what he’s heard. She swipes at him playfully. The whole class relaxes.

  “I didn’t have the help I needed, so I flunked breast-feeding and I thought I’d failed at something as basic as peeing. I’d look at pictures of refugees living in boxes and they all had a kid plugged in. Women who’d never seen a book could breast-feed, and there I was. I could annotate a bibliography. I had gone to nursing school. But I couldn’t breast-feed.

  “A lot was happening in my life around the time my daughter was born. She had colic, serious, serious colic. I had postpartum depression. My husband left me for a cult religion.”

  I wait for the glances to skitter up and ricochet off my face, gauging the depth of this revelation. Decide if I am joking. They see that I’m not.

  “Yeah, Next. It wasn’t Jonestown or Heaven’s Gate, but it wasn’t the Unitarians either.”

  I don’t know what it is about the truth, but telling it is like having a noisy generator cranking away in the background suddenly go silent. As always after my big overshare, the barometric pressure in the room drops and everyone listens, really listens, for the first time.

  “Nothing was the way I wanted it to be with my first, my only, child. Not one thing was right. If I’d had good help, though, if I’d had me, breast-feeding could have been my one right thing. I am going to give you the information you need, or tell you who can, to make it right for you.”

  At first, it made me feel too exposed to talk about myself. Especially the part about losing my husband to a cult. So I tried substituting “another woman.” Even “a man,” but anything other than my own exact, specific, bizarre truth never connected. Never made the pressure drop the way the true, inexplicable, utterly humiliating, nonlinear randomness of life did.

  “I’ve been a lactation consultant for fifteen years. It’s a silly job. When I meet people, they either think it’s some tech job or, if they do know what a lactation consultant is, the guys ask if I need an assistant. So I just say I’m a spy.”

  Hoodie Boy laughs out loud and a few of the other dads join him. Now we can start learning. Next to truth, humor is the most important element.

  “I’m not here to rip on formula. I was formula-fed. I don’t hate my mom. That’s not what caused the obvious emotional scarring.”

  They laugh again. This is a good group.

  “I’m just here to give information. I’m sure you all have researched the car seat, the crib, and the monitor. Anybody know how much formula costs?”

  Lots of shrugs. No guesses. No one knows the answers to any of the truly hard questions. Cribs, monitors, Boppies, organic washcloths—hell, breast-feeding, breast-feeding classes—they’re so ultimately incidental. It’s too late, though, to tell any of these young parents, brimming with the most concentrated, aware love they will ever feel, that of the millions of decisions they’ll have to make as parents, the only irrevocable one has already been made. It was made when they picked a person to have a child with.

  “At least twenty-five dollars a can. On sale. Usually it’s closer to thirty. If your baby is average and goes through ten cans a month, that’s two hundred and fifty dollars. Minimum. That’s a car payment every month. Here, I’m going to pass around this wheel. Check it out. Just dial in what formula costs for different time periods.” I whirl the wheel. “Oh, look, three weeks and you’ve got an iPod.”

  I walk down the aisle like an evangelical preacher going out to lay on hands and pass the wheel around.

  “When I first started teaching, I’d lead off with a big download about immunity and antigens and lower rates of sudden infant death and less plastic in the landfill. All very true and, eventually, I will get to some of that, but since there are whole organizations out there already telling moms they can express world peace, I figure that you’re probably looking for a different approach. So I start with the shiny baubles.”

  The teen mom in the back row has taken control of the wheel and is checking out what each day of breast-feeding is worth, as if someone will be handing her a gift bag every time she unbuttons. I think of this girl with her sneering Presley beauty that will turn sloppy, her life ended before it can begin, all because she never escaped Parkhaven, never went to college, and I tilt off balance for a moment. More than anything, I want to speed over to Tyler’s roach coach and free my daughter this very second.

  Peninsula. I have to get her to Peninsula.

  I yank myself back on track and return to the podium. “Hey, I saw a formula ad the other day that said, ‘Now even more like breast milk.’ You know what is just like breast milk?” I look around the room. “Breast milk.”

  A wispy blonde in pink yoga pants, the straps of her sports bra showing at the neck of her top, puts her hand up hesitantly. I know what she’s going to ask just from the way she glances at her husband, seeking his permission. “Is there any … Does a woman have to be, you know …” She makes arthritic hands in front of her chest.

  “No. This is not Juggs magazine. Size really does not matter.”

  Another hand goes up. It is the teen mom. Flecks of black polish dot the stubs of her chewed-off nails. A tiny bell hanging from the ring on her thumb tinkles. “My mom”—she gives her mother a die-bitch look—“told me that formula is more complete nutrition and that breast-feeding is just in right now, but that it’s a fad. And my boobs’ll droop if I do it.”

  “A fad? I’m sure that Joseph was out trying to find a convenience store open at night to buy some formula for Mary.”

  The mother folds her arms over her chest and I make a note to myself to schedule some extra, free visits with her daughter.

  “Breast-feeding won’t make your boobs droop any more than having a baby will. But it will help you lose weight like a speed freak.”

  I wince inwardly and search the room for any possible speed freaks. There don’t seem to be any candidates, but you never know. I make a note to myself to remove “speed freak” from the routine. The last thing I want to do is alienate any mother or father trying to do right by a child.

  A Latina with the bone structure of a Slavic supermodel says, “My doctor told me that I would have to pump and dump for five days after I had even one drink.”

  “Really? Five days? I’d like to know where the formula company sent that doctor for a cruise. No, the rule is: If it’s in the head, it’s in the milk. If you feel drunk, don’t nurse. But nursing is not like being pregnant. You can eat sushi; you can change the cat box. Ju
st don’t eat the cat box. A drink or two is not going to hurt your baby. In fact, a beer now and again might increase your milk volume.”

  Two young women, whom I assume are sisters because of their identical sloping chins, give each other party-girl thumbs-ups.

  “One beer,” I emphasize. The sisters press fingers against their lips to suppress naughty-me grins.

  Without raising her hand, a large woman in a tight-fitting top that makes her look roughly thirteen months pregnant starts speaking in a loud voice. “I have a whole different deal. This is my second”—she pats her stomach—“and my first one wanted to nurse all the time. Twenty-four/seven. Nonstop. My nipples were like hamburger meat.”

  In the front row, the husband of the woman in yoga pants glances back at Hamburger Nipples, shudders, and shakes his head to dislodge the image.

  “Yeah, and your husband might want to have sex three times a day. But we don’t always get what we want, and we don’t let ten-pound people make the decisions.” Then I tell her, tell the whole class—mostly, though, I tell myself—my mantra: “There’s a reason that God gives the little people to the big people.”

  I start in on the lecture portion of the class with this basic fact: “Women have two breasts because all mammals have one more teat than the average litter. And it looks better in a sweater.”

  Clutching the weighted doll in the crook of my arm, I use Lady Gaga and my own breast to demonstrate the football hold. We cover colostrum, letdown, engorgement, and, the holy grail of breast-feeding, the good latch.

  We watch a video that features a new mother having a beatific, transcendent nursing experience. I take a seat next to Dori as the infant’s fuzzy head roots at his blissed-out mother’s breast and I narrate. “Breast-feeding is exactly like that. Except that you’re late to work, the baby was up all night with croup, your sitter just called and said she locked her keys in her car, and your two-year-old, who you’re pretty sure has head lice, is in the bathroom trying to flush the cheese grater down the toilet. Other than that, it’s all serenity and bliss.”

  A few seconds later I remember that I forgot the trust agreement for Aubrey’s tuition. I whisper to Dori, “I’ve got to zip back to the house and pick up the papers we’ll need at the bank. Could you finish up the class? I’ll come back for you, then we’ll pick Aubrey up from here. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  I pause the video to tell the class I have to leave early. “But don’t worry about breast-feeding. Like everything else we do as parents, we will have a million opportunities to screw it all up and another million opportunities to make it right. If I can’t help, I know someone who can. So you don’t need to worry about nursing.”

  I want to add that it’s everything that happens after nursing that they need to worry about. But new parents don’t need to know that. They’ll have plenty of time to discover what horrors lie ahead. Like the College Tour.

  OCTOBER 25, 2009

  Hey, college girl! Rise and shine. The big day is here.”

  Mom is in a superhigh, excited, bubbly mood. It is like being woken up by a Japanese game-show contestant. I slide my phone open, check the time. “It’s four thirty. Our flight isn’t until nine.”

  “We need to leave a little early to beat traffic into the city.”

  “Mom, it’s Sunday. There is no traffic.”

  “Well, we have to allow time to get our bags through security.”

  “Only because you refuse to check a suitcase.”

  “Aubrey, that would add thirty dollars to the trip. Both ways. We can go out and have a nice dinner for that. Come on; security is going to be a nightmare.”

  Getting through security at the airport is a nightmare. Mostly because Mom makes me wear the ultrajumbo, puffy, rainproof parka that she insisted on buying. I guess she thinks that the I’m-heading-to-the-Yukon-to-do-the-Iditarod look is in. I want to apologize to everyone in line behind us when she spaces out and doesn’t get her old waffle-stomper boots unlaced and off her feet before it is her turn to go through the scanner. Then the vast array of clinking bracelets she thinks are so cool and hip set off the metal detector, and there is another delay when she gets herded off into the Plexiglas cubicle and wanded.

  When we finally get all dressed and ready for the dog sleds again, she goes, “Do you see why I insisted that we leave early? Getting through security is such a nightmare.” And I want to point out, “Don’t nightmares only happen when you’re asleep?” But I don’t say anything because she is in a superhigh, excited, bubbly mood and even I can’t tear the wings off that butterfly.

  As for me, I am in a superlow, unexcited, dangerously undercaffeinated, sleep-deprived mood. Mom and I had a screaming fight last night in which I essentially begged her not to make me go on this tour. Her final big ultimate argument was that the tickets were nonrefundable. The fact that my whole entire life was going to be decided based on a couple of airline tickets caused my Inner Bitch to spring to life. My Inner Bitch will protect me from being stampeded into whatever version of life Mom has planned out for me. Inner Bitch is going to go on the tour with us.

  On the plane, I immediately put my earbuds in and ignore the music while I remember the way Tyler’s voice had rumbled through me. I must have gone to sleep, because when Mom pokes me I feel as crabby and imposed upon as if she’d thrown on the light in the middle of the night. She is making it very hard for me to keep Inner Bitch restrained. I yank the earbuds out. “What?”

  “The pilot just said that the Grand Canyon is coming up on our right.”

  Instead of rolling my eyes or gasping like I want to, I just peaceably nod, and try to put the earbuds back in. But she stops me to rhapsodize about how beautiful the clouds are when viewed from up above. “Don’t they look like enchanted castles of feathers?”

  “I guess.”

  “You don’t seem very excited.”

  “This is not the first time I’ve seen clouds.”

  “But it’s the first time you’ve seen them on the way to visit your dream school.”

  “When did Peninsula become my dream school?”

  She is genuinely surprised. “Aubrey, we spent your entire junior year sifting through all those catalogs and going to all those College Nights.”

  College Nights.

  Eating subpar cookies and listening to kids ask suck-ass questions. That’s when it started to sink in that I was running like a hamster on a treadmill just so I could prove what a very special, very speedy hamster I was and be allowed to spend a fortune for the privilege of running on an even faster treadmill. I guess Mom hadn’t noticed that all College Nights had ended up doing was making me very, very tired.

  “You’re acting like you don’t remember any of this. That we didn’t jointly decide that Peninsula sounded like the only college that would really let you find your own path.”

  “I’m tired,” I say. Then, before she has a chance to broadcast one of her Embrace Life lectures, I jam the earbuds back in, shut my eyes, and think about how much easier it would be to be an Asian kid. If you are Asian, the deal with your parents is clear from day one: “You have to be exactly like me except better or I will hate you and the whole community will hate you. Even all the ancestors will hate you.”

  There is none of this “find your own path” bullshit. Asian parents are right up front: “Be a grade-getting android. Crush everyone around you in academics, music—as long as it’s classical—and forget about sports, friends, and sex. Be valedictorian or here’s the sword to commit hara-kiri.” Clear. Simple. Honest.

  It is misting when we get off the plane six hours later in Seattle. We pick up our rental car, a Dodge Microdot, maybe a Toyota Flea, some ridiculously tiny clown car that my mother has gotten a deal on, and head south. For the entire hour-long drive, she issues bulletins about how gorgeous everything is. Even though she’s pretty much claimed every admiration molecule available, how can I argue with giant evergreens, misty rain, and this soft light that makes all the co
lors so deep and saturated that looking at a petunia hurts your eyes?

  At Peninsula, the visiting seniors and their parents are herded into a big, open meeting hall that is decorated with carvings of salmon and whales and has an immense totem pole planted right in the middle like we are going to spend four years learning how to chew deer hide to make our moccasins all nice and soft.

  The president welcomes us. He is African American. I look around the room. If a bomb went off, there wouldn’t be a Phish fan left alive. Almost everyone is not just white, but phosphorescent, Scandinavian white. Seems the only way they can get a black person to come to Peninsula is to make him president of the college.

  Which doesn’t stop him from going on about “Peninsula’s commitment to diversity.” Since there aren’t any actual races to get diverse about, the next speakers are from the Ps & Qs, Peninsula’s queer alliance, the Transgendered Students United, then the Feminist Majority. If I was actually interested, I would mostly want to hear about majors and teachers, but instead I get schooled about Peninsula’s zero tolerance for pretty much anything that would hurt anyone’s super-evolved feelings.

  Then we all march in a big group across the quad and into the campus dining hall.

  “Can you believe this?” Mom asks, loading up her tray with heirloom tomatoes and baby arugula grown in the student-tended organic garden. The vegetables are displayed behind lights like they are Broadway stars. “You would pay a fortune for produce like this at Whole Foods.”

  My mom’s celebrity vegetation euphoria makes me crave a cheeseburger, and I go outside where a grill has been set up for sad outcast carnivores like me. I decide that the diversity group I’d organize would be dedicated to bacon. I imagine saying this to Tyler. Imagine him laughing.

  Back inside, Mom waves at me in her insane way that causes every single person in the entire cafeteria to stare. She is sitting with the woman who stood in line in front of us when we bought our dinner tickets. Naturally, Mom bonded instantly with her.