Binky-binky
I can miss my babies so much – truly, genuinely – and simultaneously rage at the fact of having one. I can feel sorrow for the end of our baby era – truly, genuinely – and never want to do it again.
Illustration by E. Sarb.
I haul my youngest through the hallway, his longer-than-yesterday legs kicking the air, his heavier-than-yesterday deadweight further complicating whatever is already going on with my lumbar spine.
“No thankoo, no thankoo, no want nigh’ nighhhhh’,” he wails. To no avail: it is steadfastly night-night. When evening hits, this impatient toddler-parent shuts down.
We round the corner into his room and his body softens. He twists up to look at me hopefully. “Binky-binky?”
I laugh, surprised. He hasn’t asked for a pacifier in months and I’m tempted. What would it hurt? He feels the unfairness of bedtime while his siblings play; why not at least let him have a pacifier?
Instead, I say “BINKY-binky! What?! Why would you want a binky-binky, you silly? Binky-binky is for babies! Are you mama’s teeny baby?” and I tickle him and he giggles and he snuggles his stuffed sloth and asks me to sing Seven Nation Army for his lullaby because that’s the sort of weirdo he is and he falls asleep in minutes, no pacifier needed.
Pacifiers in the mouth of a toddler are about the cutest thing. Their love for this piece of rubber! The way they brandish them like a cigar held in their chubby fingers as they spew gibberish and then tuck the binky back in! Gah!
Acquiescing to the pacifier would have caused problems, of course. One night turns to two, turns to weaning him away from his binky-binky at four years old (been there). But I admit, the option tugged at me.
We’ve given up most of the vestiges of babyhood. The onesies and their tiny snaps are gone. We happily threw out three hundred or so bottles and useless sippy cup lids. The double stroller now belongs to another family, making way in our garage for all four of the kid’s bikes.
Maybe, when my big ol’ three-year-old made that plea for a binky-binky, the tug I felt was one of loss as my last baby’s babyness falls away.
Ohhh does she want one more? you may think. No, I assure you. She does not.
I know this with certainty, thanks to a confusing phenomenon I experience regularly amid our sizable brood. It presents like this:
I encounter a video of my cherub-cheeked firstborn reminding me how she used to lisp and stomp around like a despot.
I clutch my heart in wist like all parents from time immemorial.
Meanwhile, because our kids span such a large age group, I actually have a flesh-and-blood toddler in the room with me lisping and marching around like a despot.
And – literally in with the same breath that has caught in my throat with missing my video-baby I yell at my in-the-flesh baby to go away because he’s annoying me.
I can miss my babies so much – truly, genuinely – and simultaneously rage at the fact of having one. I can feel sorrow for the end of our baby era – truly, genuinely – and never want to do it again.
Every day, every essay, I plead with myself to enjoy these ages and stages. “Pay attention, enjoy this, you will miss this.” Every day I succeed and I fail. I breathe in a baby’s scent, feel a toddler’s weight, drink up the way a preschooler tells me about reptiles called “Slizzards,” let an elementary child’s efforts at a new sport pierce my heart. Success! Then I grumble over the baby’s diaper bag, exasperate at the toddler’s neediness, half-listen to the preschooler’s story, and have no time for the elementary student’s emotional highs and lows. And I feel all the regrets for those missed moments while missing them again and again, times four.
I could have seven children, eight, eleven, and never get it right. There will always, always be a pang when it comes time for the Binky-Binky Goodbye.
