The Tamesis
My nine-month-old bottle-fed daughter is jealous of other kids eating solids for lunch, so I let her part-time nanny pack her a lunchbox.
Three days a week, I spend an entire morning enjoying my lunch break like I’m packing a box for a new recruit who can’t chew. Carrots were shaped into a skull and crossbones and cucumbers were trimmed into a Star of David shape. This unsalted baby green salad (salt is our second nemesis after screens) suffocates my aesthetic mind as I spend my mornings with delicious food. Don’t ask me why, but my baby’s lunch box has to be some kind of moment.
This everyday ritual, this mild artistic psychosis in pursuit of edible still lifes, certainly got me thinking. When the baby comes home in the afternoon, I’ll puree whatever (without salt) into a lump-free gruel and feed it with a slingshot instead of a spoon. She had the messiest, least glamorous soft dinner in a reverse waterproof coat and then I soaked her in soapy water and went to bed. There’s no pursuit of high-end or even mid-range aesthetic excellence here, but her lunch has to be a certain way.
The same goes for traveling. At home we are pretty sloppy. Shit your pants? We could spend a commando afternoon. Spilled milk? There is no use crying over it. But there’s something about leaving home that feels, if not “Sunday Best,” then at least a Wednesday after-get off work energy. I seemed to be constantly preparing myself for the baby, the promise of an occasion.
I find it impossible to dress her in a way that I wouldn’t wear myself (if I were a foot tall and technically color-blind) – a nod to something more important than floral and practicality. Christmas has us kicking into high gear: velvet and white ballerina leotards and ironic office party hats. But it wasn’t just her looks that I admired; Our social dates are also carefully planned. Saturday’s theme was a sensory experience of marine life, dividing a kaleidoscopic tropics into water tanks. We took her to the Imperial War Museum because we love airplanes and maybe she could become a pilot?
There was a lot of speculation in supermarkets last week in France about which new toys would be suitable for baby’s first beach holiday. Ultimately, we settled on a rake, hoe, and mower, rather than the more traditional (pedestrian) bucket and shovel. Maybe she’ll become a landscape gardener, I thought to myself, planning for the day she could recall an afternoon like this in soft focus in her vaguely autobiographical novel. Then we arrived at the picturesque French waterside, where my daughter ignored the tide and concentrated on licking the delicious taste of salt off the rocks.
There’s something both noble and slightly unhinged about all of this: the way we try to weave our childhoods into highlight reels, even if we have no intention of publishing it. I found myself nurturing not just the girl in front of me, but the woman she would become, providing fascinating details about her past. I’m building a universe that could theoretically calcify into something she might describe as magic To her teacher (or better yet, her therapist). But it became increasingly clear to me that I was creating memories for those who don’t remember. I’m making a movie that she’s not actually watching. I am an inconspicuous cog in the soft tyranny of memory creation.
A long time ago, I read that we remember trauma more deeply than we remember joy—nature’s way of stopping us from putting our hands in the fire twice. So…baby will remember the first time I dropped her off (relax, I haven’t yet), or the smell of the car seat on a hot day, or being chased by bees and jumping into a lake ( my girl reference real)? I certainly vividly remember my mom’s fries pot fire.
