Girl Walks Into a Bar . . .: Comedy Calamities, Dating Disasters, and a Midlife Miracle

by Rachel Dratch

  A weird phenomenon is that when my parents are around Eli, they become about one hundred times more Jewish than they are in real life. My dad will start singing as if he just walked off the boat from the Old Country—great hits like “Yaidle deedle dai, yaidle deedle dee…” and its B side, “Deedle yaidle dai, deedle yaidle dai.” My dad grew up in an immigrant household, where his parents spoke Yiddish. My mom, on the other hand, is second generation and did not grow up speaking Yiddish. You wouldn’t know this, though, when she is dealing with Eli. “Oh, look at that little punim!” “Come here, little butchkie.” “Hello, bubbele.” Once she said, “Ohhh, you little fresser,” a word I’d never even heard before, and I said, “Mom! Who are you?” Eli was making them tap into some primal ancestral lore or something mysterious. They both started channeling the songs and language that may have been sung and spoken to them when they were babies. When my dad would bust into some really Yiddish song, I’d start to get a bit self-conscious around John, imagining him thinking, “What the hell are they saying to my child?”

  “Dad, could you change up the repertoire?” I’d say.

  “Huh? OK. Too Jewish?” And he’d switch over to war songs. Again, I guess these were the songs he associated with being a kid. Of course a baby wants to hear war songs. It’s only natural.

  So while other grandparents are softly crooning “Rock-a-bye Baby” or “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” my father is careening down the sidewalks of New York, pushing the stroller, not taking his eyes off the little “merracle.” He enthusiastically belts out another tune that in his world is perfect for a baby: “FROM THE HALLS OF MONTEZUMA, TO THE SHORES OF TRIPOLIIIII! WE WILL FIGHT OUR COUNTRY’S BATTLES OVER LAND AND AIR AND SEA…”

  The family is in hot pursuit.

  The Great Pile of Unknowns

  Back when I was pregnant and John had gotten used to the idea of fatherhood, he started to think of all the fun things he could do with a son. He fantasized about taking his son to games, throwing the ball around, and going fishing—all the traditional father/son activities. He also mentioned a family heirloom of sorts that he was excited to pass down to Eli. When John was a kid, his mother had taken a ceramics class and had painted a little statuette for him. The statuette was of a baseball player, and John’s mom had even personalized it by inscribing To John, 1975, Love, Mom on the bottom of the player’s foot. John thought of how cool it would be to write Eli with the date on the other foot … a true sentimental father-to-son family heirloom.

  John excitedly approached me when it arrived in the mail. “My mom sent the statue for Eli!” He unveiled it to me. There was a little fact he had left out in the telling: The statue was creepy as hell.

  I blurted it out instantly. “That’s creepy.” The thing looked like Chucky.

  “No! It’s cute!” said John.

  To me, the young lad had evil clown elements—wide-set impish eyes and a too-broad smile that put me in mind of a maniacal ventriloquist’s doll. What kind of psychological damage could be done to my son by going to bed under the demonic eyes of this boyish baseball player who, I was betting, came to life at night and ran around the room in a crab walk?

  John left it on the table in my living room. The eyes would follow my every move. I couldn’t live with this statue in my realm. I was afraid I might roll over in bed and the thing would be lying next to me, staring at me with his enormous grin and wide-set eyes. John took the statue back to his place and we put it on the list of “things we would deal with later.”

  There were a lot of things on this list. Things we didn’t even talk about as things on the list. Where would Eli go if we simultaneously kicked the bucket? No idea. Hadn’t been discussed. How would we explain our uni-que situation to Eli? Who knew what we would even be by the time such a discussion came up? You may be thinking, “Well, I would have discussed these things,” but we were focusing on how well we were doing for two people thrown into a big situation and how much worse things could be if either one of us had turned out to be difficult, uncompromising, or a stone-cold freak.

  In dealing with the “now” of infant care, many what-about-down-the-roads got shelved for a time when we were actually down the road. Of course I would have loved to have everything in its place mentally and emotionally for Eli’s sake. But Eli’s appearance on the scene was unique and I didn’t question my good fortune in having him come into my life. He wasn’t by the book to start with, which was his magic, and I hoped we could focus on that magic and go with the flow. So heavy topics got pushed to another day. We hadn’t even discussed religion.

  I would like to raise Eli Jewish or at least have him learn about Judaism, not because I’m superreligious but because I feel a cultural and historical obligation to pass down the traditions. You can’t really pick up what Judaism is all about without making some effort with religious school. John had no knowledge of Judaism at all. I’m not even sure he had met many Jewish people in his life. The only Judaism I exposed him to thus far was a seder for Passover thrown by a friend of mine here in New York City, when Eli was about seven months old. It was a very casual affair, each couple who was attending consisting of a Jew and a non-Jew. Looking around, I realized I was the most learned Jewish person in the room, which is not saying a lot. Woe to the people if I were the one entrusted to know enough about Judaism to be the expert. You realize how little you know about your own religion when you are asked to explain it to a newbie.

  John asked me, “So what is it we’re going to?”

  “It’s a seder.”

  “What is it? What do we do?”

  “It celebrates when the Jews escaped from Egypt. It’s just like a dinner party, only there are little readings throughout.”

  “Wait. Am I going to have to read something?”

  “Yeah, but don’t worry about it. Everyone reads a little part. It’s not a big deal.”

  “We have dinner, but people are reading during it? So … it’s like a murder mystery?”

  Pause. “Yeah. It’s like a murder mystery.”

  When pressed for details about everything and I heard myself explaining my religion, I realized I may as well have been describing the Swahili creation myth. That is how random this stuff sounded coming out of my mouth.

  “Passover is the celebration of the Jews getting out of Egypt. And there’s this plate of symbolic foods on the table and we explain what the foods mean. Like there’s the bitter herbs that you dip in salt water that represent the bitterness of our plight and the tears.” My mind started racing about how John was going to react to various parts of the seder. “We open the door so Elijah the Prophet can come in, and we leave a cup of wine for him.” I may as well have been saying, “Oh, and we wait for a ghost to come in and have a drink too.” What about the Ten Plagues? That could be a problem. “See, we list the Ten Plagues that God sent down upon the ancient Egyptians, and you put a drop of wine on your plate for each plague.” I started thinking of how weird it was going to be when he is at this dinner party and we start saying in unison, “Vermin!” “Boils!” and “the Slaying of the Firstborn!” If I were happening upon someone’s religion for the first time, and everyone were tossing around the phrase “the Slaying of the Firstborn,” I may well have made a mental note on the location of the exits. I mean, how the hell am I going to sell John on my religion? I wish the Jews had had better PR people when all the traditions were getting started. Didn’t they know what they’d be up against? Santa Claus and Christmas trees and caroling and eggnog? Easter bunnies and baskets of chocolate? And what are we offering?…

  “No, seriously, get on board with me here. Happy Yom Kippur, y’all! And now comes the part where we don’t eat all day. We fast! Isn’t that fun?”

  Or “You think you’d like an Easter basket full of candy, boys and girls? Nooo. You’re Jewish! How about some dry unleavened bread topped with a delicious dollop of horseradish! Gather ’round, kids!! Mmmm!”

  I have my work cut out for me, but for now
it’s on the “later” pile with the creepy statue. I care more about the religion issue than the creepy statue, but the pile’s pretty big, so there’s room for dilemmas large and small.

  Addendum: After I wrote about the creepy statue and photographed it for a visual aid, John accidentally knocked him off his perch and he shattered into four pieces. I actually do feel bad about that, like I may have put a curse on the little guy. I’m hoping he can be glued back together so Eli can have this family heirloom in his possession, passed down lovingly from generation to generation. And so he can learn early on the signs of what creepy people look like.

  “You May Ask Yourself…”

  Perhaps the biggest question on the pile of the Unknown is “What’s up with you and John?” I get asked it almost every day. It’s even knocked the “What happened with 30 Rock?” question out of top position. Good friends to mere acquaintances ask, and I don’t really have a pat answer. How do I introduce John to people? I feel weird just saying simply, “This is John.” I feel like I should say, “This is my baby daddy, John.” “This is my boyfriend, John.” Maybe “This is John, a-guy-I-was-casually-dating-long-distance-and-then-surprise!-I-became-pregnant-and-we-are-figuring-it-out-and-he’s-involved-as-a-father-but-we’re-not-sure-what-our-relationship-is-going-to-be. Nice to meet you!”

  Sometimes, to make myself feel normal, I imagine that we are from India and are in an arranged marriage, and how statistics show that arranged marriages have an equal success rate to “soul mate” marriages. “If only I were Indian,” I’d think, “my situation would be totally ordinary!”

  In those moments when our “courting personae” would go out the window and give way to our inner Bigfoot, John and I discovered that we have a fundamental difference of style, along with the obvious East Coast/Midwest, actor/businessman, or flaming liberal/possible secret Republican divisions between us. I guess the best way to describe our different styles (now that I can fully cop to the fact that I am an airy-fairy hippie-dippie person) is that he is an Earth sign and I am a Water sign. From my scanty knowledge of horoscopes, that means, for example, I’m fine with arriving at an airport with minimal time as opposed to wanting to hunker down and get coffee and read the paper at the gate for two hours. (Now, granted, I have missed two planes in my life and he’s probably missed none.) John’s apartment is neat and tidy, and mine, well—one time early on, when John was coming to visit, I said I had to clean my apartment before he came over.

  He said not to bother.

  “Don’t bother?” I said. “But I want to.”

  To which John replied, “I’ve seen your apartment and I know how you live, Sanford and Son.”

  And if, say, I’m walking around my apartment holding Eli, and I notice that my ass crack has been exposed because my pants are falling down, I don’t give it that much thought. Who cares? I’m holding a baby. John prefers order—order of time, space, and, I found, order of pants being at your waist and not an inch or two down your crack. If he says, “Hey, the plumber’s here!” or worse yet, “Pull your pants up,” it makes me insane…. I have had minimal sleep, and I’ve been immersed in Babyland for the whole day, and I’m not exactly looking for Glamour Don’ts. You may as well just throw one of those black strips across my eyes for the next three years. When John makes such comments, I tell him that I want to dropkick him into the center of a circle of suburban moms so they can rip into him like a pack of hyenas. Ladies, can I get a what-what?

  Though he denies it, sometimes I feel he would rather be with a woman who shops at Talbot’s and wears a headband and pearls and always has aspirin on hand in a delicate pillbox that she carries in her fresh, square Coach bag. Looks like the Casting Directors on high ended up going in a Different Direction.

  Maybe there’s a middle ground, though. I have to admit, last time John gave me the side-eye over my wardrobe choice, a ratty red shirt that I wear on an every-other-day basis under a red sweatshirt, I got really annoyed with him and marched off to the Duane Reade drugstore to run my errands, whereupon an older lady passing me in the aisle immediately asked if I worked there.

  In spite of the challenges our Earth/Water energies can present, what I never foresaw is that John plays a very different role for Eli than I do. John is all about physical play—stuff it wouldn’t cross my mind to do. He’s always riding Eli on his shoulders like he’s in a horse race, or moving his legs around back and forth until Eli is in a laughing fit as John says his own invented chant of “Shake ’n Bake! Shake ’n Bake! What’s my favorite chicken?” Though I am supposed to be the comedian in the family, it’s John who often gets him laughing in a crazy baby belly-laugh giggle fit. I’m the Regulator—time to nap, time to eat, time to change the diaper, time for a bath, but Eli knows that when John walks into the room, here comes the fun! (I discovered from talking to other moms that’s a common dynamic—so unfair!)

  When Eli was born, our lives each took a dramatic turn, albeit a delightful, joyful turn. However, our former lives as single people out on the town were a mere several months in our past, fading away in the rearview mirror. Sometimes, John and I catch ourselves in a stereotypical mommy/daddy scenario, like taking a car ride with the car seat, the diaper bag, all the gear. Perhaps Eli has just projectile-vomited in the backseat and we are cleaning it all up and surrounded by rags, sippy cups, and formula. In times like this, we would bust out a tiny fragment of a line from the Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime.” You know, the line that goes “You may ask yourself … how did I get here?” One of us would simply say in a David Byrne voice: “You may ask yourself…” It seemed to provide relief by putting a needed twist on the most domestic of situations.

  Since bringing Eli home, I’ve had many moments when I’ve looked down at myself as if in an out-of-body experience as I walked him in the stroller, in complete wonderment that this was my life. It seemed possible I would wake up and realize this had just been a really detailed and elaborate dream. My brain still isn’t used to the miracle—I had it so hardwired to be anti-miracle. I would guess because of this fact, I am extra-appreciative and don’t mind at all the sleep deprivation, the time deprivation, and the sudden absence of cavorting late at night, Montepulciano, and expertly made tagliatelle Bolognese.

  Once Eli first started smiling at around two months, no matter how early it was, no matter how little sleep I’d gotten, and no matter how much I have never in my life been a morning person, I’d look over and see him smiling away, and my inner monologue would go instantly from “Oh God, I’m so exhausted—what the hell time is it—what the …?” to “Awwww, you little guy. You got me again!”

  I know. I know. I’m sounding dangerously like one of the Baby Shower People—talking about sleep schedules and breast pumps and, now, how cute my baby is. If you are anything like Former Me, you may be reading this and thinking, “OK, so she became one of those Shower People. Now I have to hear stories about how great life is with a baby and how cute his poops are.” I know the feeling.

  I remember one Sunday afternoon, long before Eli, long before John. I was in my early forties and had that low-level single-lady panic revving quietly about where my life had ended up as opposed to where I thought it would be. I went to join a friend for lunch. He was with one of his good friends, a beautiful, successful actress whom I had met a few times through him. She was also in her early forties, though she was married to a dreamy guy and was the mother of a new baby. When I walked up to the table, she bluntly said to me, “You look depressed!” This chick barely knew me. Now, either she was extremely rude and presumptuous or she was seeing through my own self-denial into my core. I still don’t know which. It was a Sunday, and Sunday Feeling can be mistaken for depression, or I suppose Sunday Feeling can straight-up be depression.

  As lunch progressed, they were chatting about this and that. Famous Actress had rubbed me the wrong way or jarred my soul—again, I can’t say which, maybe a combo platter of both—and I was having trouble getting back on the rails
into the conversation. Then she said, “I know what will cheer you up! You should come over sometime and just hang out with the baby! That’ll cheer anyone up!”

  I wish I had a freeze-frame of my face the second she said that. I’m sure an anthropologist studying the microexpressions of my eyes, my mouth, and every single muscle in my face would conclude that that particular combination of muscular reactions equaled the universal response of “BITCH, PLEASE.”

  OK, Shower People, listen up. WHY would a single lady in her forties, with no prospects and, at this point, no hope in her heart want to go spend her time at a beautiful actress’s house—which I’m sure is designed and decorated like something out of a magazine, for I’d heard she had impeccable taste—and willingly, I mean VOLUNTARILY, walk into Perfectville to spend time with Perfect Baby? That is going to cheer me up? Does a person on a strict diet go hang out at Ben & Jerry’s all day and look at people eating sundaes to “cheer up”?

  Single Ladies, Former Me’s, Trouble Conceivings, Gay Men Wondering, and the two Straight Men who are concerned about having a child in a timely fashion—I know babies can be a delicate topic, because I lived on the other side for so long. If a baby is something you are struggling about, I would just say, don’t be like I was and let your fears dictate your future. I think I would have been too scared to explore what my other options were if I hadn’t had the divine intervention of the Hawaiian Volcano gods. Because I have found that having a baby in your life is pretty wonderful. I have to be honest about that. However, I also solemnly promise to not e-mail you baby pictures and talk about the Cutest Poop Ever. I’ve been there. I lived it. And I know—you don’t need that shit.