Poop

My doppelganger wrote a book called "Bossypants".  I heard Terry Gross, on NPR, interview Tina Fey last week. I know Terry has Buffalo ties and she's loved by all - but she always sounds smug and a little too clever and her tone just PISSES ME OFF. Plus, she says "ummm" all the time.  Anyway, I suffered through Terry talking so I could listen to Tina Fey. I love Tina Fey. I think if we knew each other we would be friends. I got that same feeling when I heard Ann Patchett, my favorite writer, address an audience at Canisius College...she and I should be best friends, too.


Anyway, Terry asked Tina to start off the interview by reading an excerpt from her book called "A Mother's prayer for it's daughter". But, of course, Terry interrupted her before she finished.


I wouldn't know that Terry didn't let her finish unless my friend, Kathleen hadn't  posted the entire prayer on Facebook tonight.  The ending! She interrupted before the ending. Terry Gross is such a pain. Anyway, the ending conjured up images from the time when I was a young mother. Or, at least when my children were young:

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back. “My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.  Amen.


That whole exploding poop up the back seemed to happen at the most inopportune times: dining at restaurants with white table cloths, at 4 a.m. when you are sharing the bed with your baby at your best friend's house, in the car-seat so that the seat had to be trashed, 35,000 feet above the earth. Washing it off the neck is easy -  maneuvering the baby between 2 young girls on a flight to Florida and into the closet of a airline toilet is difficult to say the least. Baby wipes, even if you have a full pack, just don't do the trick.

I remember Bill calling me during a dinner I was having with some girlfriends from out of town. He frantically told me that baby Will had exploding poop up the back. Bill was looking for advice (truthfully, he was looking for me to come home and take care of it). I could handle poop - I don't know why I never threw up, but I just dealt with it. The whole gag reflex thing never happened when I changed Will or Emma.  My advice for Bill was pretty simple and, luckily they were both at home: Strip (both the baby and yourself), turn on the shower, get in with baby held away from you. Then shove the baby's bum and back into the spray. Follow by some soap and rinse again. If it were summer, I may have told him to use the hose in the garden.

Maybe Terry Gross left off the last piece of the prayer because of the poop reference. Maybe Terry Gross found it gross. HA!  But, everybody poops and some of us have to clean it up. And, depending on whose poop it is, some of us just don't mind.