Bubble boy

"The Bergers are on the line," he tells me, his face full of terror. For a whole year we've managed to screen their calls, but now, in a moment of mindlessness, he answered. Now we absolutely must come over for Friday night dinner. But just a minute - why did I get pregnant in 2005? Here's the ultimate excuse for congenital lack of spontaneity: the dwarf!

I take the phone and with a smile explain to Mrs. Berger that he goes to bed every evening at 8 and that we are now trying to get him used to a routine, his bed and his room, so there's no way we can bring him, or call a babysitter, or get together at all within the next 10 years. We vow to arrange something when he heads off to summer camp, and hang up with relief. Just between us, Mrs. Berger doesn't really want to see us; she's just more devoted than we are to the idea that despite the children, life must go on.

Once - in the 1990s, I think - I went to the beach spontaneously. True, I waxed two days beforehand, tried on five bathing suits and didn't drink for 24 hours so my tummy would be flat, but then I sat and waited for someone to call and invite me spontaneously to the beach. It was a very successful experience, and ever since then I have taken the liberty of describing myself as an easygoing woman and ... yes, spontaneous.

But the moment the dwarf was born, I was delighted to discover that no one expected me to be spontaneous anymore. Particularly when something simple like going to the supermarket involves two days of prior coordination (Leave me the car. Is his seat in place? You have to prepare a bag with diapers and clothes and a bottle - is this a good time? Just a minute, isn't he sleeping? He's not hungry? Actually, mom, if you're going to the supermarket anyway, maybe you'll get me bread? No, no, the other stuff isn't urgent).

So spontaneity is out, but on the other hand it's impossible to adjust to any sort of relaxing routine, because by the time we manage to create some kind of routine the dwarf has grown and changes it completely. Just as we finally work out the breastfeeding thing - I am the food and he is the feeder - he's suddenly six months old and everything changes. After an hour of explanations at the well-baby clinic, where they tell me which vegetable he is supposed to eat first and how to cook it and when to feed him, I get home exhausted and wonder if he can't just keep breastfeeding until he's ready for a happy meal. I imagine him at 17, asking for a bit of titty the night before the civics matriculation exam, and then understand that when he is 17 the titty will be 50, which in titty years is a lot older, so I reconsider.

And the truth is that within a few days, I have already mastered the puree he is supposed to eat and I have learned how to feed him without our clothes getting stained (supper in the nude, so he will have something to talk about in therapy). But when I go back to the clinic brimming with pride and ready for another year or two of the same, I discover that we have moved on to another phase. From now on he must eat by himself, with his fingers, and I should not mash the food, because it's important that he chew by himself - but don't get used to it, because in two months it will all change again.

I have to find a way to stop all this, I think to myself, and fantasize about how to hold on to the here and now, maybe in a really large jar, where I can keep myself and the dwarf and our intimate relationship preserved within panes of glass. We will live happily, without having to learn new things, without potty training, without adolescent hormones and without his first girlfriend (she's not good enough for him).

The only problem is that he has two grandmothers who, whenever they see a jar, have to pickle something in it, and for my boy I am ready to do anything - except stink of dill and garlic.