The Cranemakers

Have I mentioned how much I love the show Cheers?  I think everyone has a guilty pleasure childhood comfort TV show, and for me Cheers is it.  It reminds me of my Boston childhood.  And in my defense, the show is actually pretty intelligent and well written and genuinely funny, unlike a lot of 80s sitcoms.

Other than the one in which John Cleese plays a marriage counselor, The Cranemakers has to be my favorite episode, one which I’ve Tivo’d and watched many, many times.  For those unfamiliar, the Cranes, both highly cerebral psychologists, get pregnant, and instantly turn into “that couple” – the ones that think they invented pregnancy and annoy all their friends with their constant harping about it.  Then they decide they want to forge a whole new world, away from all this materialism, and raise their child to only eat what he can kill, whittle his own furniture, and live off the land.  They take a weekend in a woodland cabin to try it out – and within hours of freezing with no electricity or running water decide they were delusional and return to the city and get over themselves. 

This episode is brilliant on so many levels.  Even as a teenager when I first saw this it gave me a list of things NOT to do – to not be that person who annoys everyone with constant pregnancy/baby stuff, to not be that person who thinks they’re the first one to ever procreate, to not be that person who thinks they’re going to outdo everyone else with their high-minded idealism about childrearing.  That for thousands of years we’ve “had it all wrong” and I’m going to be the one to have all the answers – OR that what we’ve naturally evolved to is all wrong and our ancestors had all the answers (never mind they all died at 30 of scurvy…but that’s another story). 

Now I do have a “simple is best” approach, as you know – I don’t want tons of unnecessary crap in my kid’s life, I want him/her to read books rather than playing hours of video games, get out and play, have some social/community awareness, etc.  And those are all good impulses, I believe.  But I am entirely willing to accept that once I get into the game of parenting that all bets are off, and there may just be times when plopping the kid in front of Barney is easier than having them fuss and pull on me and prevent me from cooking dinner, or promising ice cream after a doctor’s visit isn’t necessarily bribing but just making the experience less traumatic.  I don’t have all the answers.  At the moment I have no answers at all, actually.  I figure like most first time moms I’ll just do all the research I can and then see what works based on the kid’s development and natural personality, with the understanding that I’ll probably make a lot of mistakes along the way.

I remember when all of my friends started having kids and suddenly they could do nothing but talk about baby stuff.  Breastfeeding, sleeping patterns, judging other parents and how irresponsible they all are.  And I listened patiently, because I understood this is their whole life right now and things like keeping up with current events or seeing the latest movies have become a low priority.  But god, I don’t want to be that person.  Eventually they did come back to the real world, but those first years were tough.  I remember I had one friend who used the sentence “now that I’m pregnant” at least fifty times during one lunch and I wanted to strangle her.  Of course in retrospect I was probably just jealous…but that doesn’t make it any less annoying.  Already with the few interactions I’ve had with friends since I’ve been “out” I try to only talk about it when asked…and then shut up after a reasonable amount of time and say, “So, how are you doing?  What have you been up to lately?”  I want people to know I’m not going to turn into a zombie just because I have a kid.  I’m still me.  I lead a full adult life up until this point, am very interested in what goes on in the world, and want to be engaged in it.  I know it’s totally natural to lose yourself in motherhood, especially initially when it’s really physically demanding, but I hope, I hope I can keep some vestige of myself in there.  I want being a mother to be an aspect of who I am, not ALL of who I am.  Is this possible?  There’s only one way to find out!