BABY FACE
We decided to call our new infant, “Jamie Lee,” after
seeing this name in the society page of the local paper shortly before her
birth. Her unusual name caused some people to think we had a baby boy. Jamie
did not care for her name while growing up. Later, she changed the spelling of
her middle name to “Leigh” and is now quite pleased with her moniker.
Jamie arrived on time, a full term perfectly healthy
baby. We had bought just about everything needed for a newborn: Crib, bassinet,
furniture, playpen, carriage. You name it; we had it. We were elated to bring
her into our home, and looked forward to becoming ideal parents. We had no idea
how difficult this task would be during the next few weeks. Our idyllic concept
of parenthood soon ended when we could not soothe Jamie who cried and cried. We
had expected some crying, but her screams were constant and unending. After ten
days of sleeplessness, we were both completely unnerved.
One experience illustrates my state of mind. A man knocked
on our apartment door, introduced himself as a representative of Metropolitan
Life Insurance Company, and stuck out his hand to shake mine. Without comment,
I slammed the door in his face. Luckily, he pulled his hand out of the way
before the door slammed shut with a resounding bang. A few days later, he
phoned to apologize for making a cold call.
“No, I am the one who should apologize for being so
rude. At the moment, we have no interest in buying insurance.” Had he been
peddling sleeping pills, we would have invited him in for dinner.
At her two-week checkup, the pediatrician said Jamie
had lost weight and advised Angie to give up her efforts to breast-feed. Jamie’s
cries were ones of starvation. As soon as we started feeding her formula, she
became a happy infant, and we regained our sanity.
Parents in those days cared for their infants using cloth
diapers and sterilized powdered milk. The convenience of Pampers and packaged
formula were years away. Should Jamie awake before we had time to sterilize the
next batch of milk, we had to endure her screams while we rushed to get the pot
of water boiling. Nothing made me feel more despondent than having to delay
feeding her because we lacked sterilized milk. In time, we became more
pragmatic. To hell with germs. To hell with Dr. Spock. Give the kid something to drink, sterilized or
not. Naturally, Jamie thrived, and so did we.
Initially, we ordered diaper service. In short order,
we found it far more convenient to wash the diapers ourselves. Learning how to
pin a diaper, now a lost art, took me quite a while to master. I punctured
Jamie on more than one occasion.
All parents believe their first baby is the most
special person in the world, and we were no exception. By the time Jamie turned
six months, she had become gloriously angelic in our eyes. She had an olive
complexion and curly black hair. Angie dressed her in new clothes every day, so
it seemed. We were bursting with pride and happiness. A stranger had come and
turned our world into something magical.
In the summer of 1957, we spent our vacation in New York in order to show Jamie to our relatives. While
visiting my parents, my mom placed Jamie on the fire escape for some nice fresh
Hoboken air. Angie gasped, and stood petrified. She thought my
mother had put Jamie’s life at risk and couldn’t wait to retrieve her. Home
movies show my parents, leaning out the front window, waving good-bye to us as
we returned to California , a treasured memory from that trip.
The TWA flight from New York to San Francisco took about 18 hours, a tortuous journey. The plane made
frequent stops all across the country, including an extended layover in Kansas City , during which time the passengers remained on board
the aircraft. Poor Angie. She sat there in sweltering heat, cuddling Jamie while
suffering from an infection. The round trip airfare of $175 had seemed like
quite a bargain, but it cost us a lot more in discomfort. Jamie did not mind. She
never cried a peep nor did she file a complaint with the police.
Despite the ordeal, our trip convinced us that we had
made a wise decision to move to the West Coast. San Mateo had so much more to offer us than Hoboken or Brooklyn , our roots.
As 1957 came to an end, we looked back and realized
how much we had experienced in our marriage. We had risen from the despair of
miscarriage to the elation of childbirth. We felt grateful and pleased.
Early on in our marriage, we agreed that she would
control the purse strings. She had proven to be a far better at money manager
than I. During the brief time we were wed, she paid off the costs of furnishing
our apartment and a vacation trip back east without the need to borrow or
resort to credit.
Infants dominated our lives. Our neighbors, Pat and
Kate Moran, had their first baby, whom they named Shauna, a few days after
Jamie had been born. Angie’s friend, Frances (and husband Ted) Lysten, whom she
met while employed at Lenkurt Electric, also gave birth to a girl about the
same time. The three new moms compared notes seemingly every day.
We stayed close to home; content to take weekend
drives around the area. We were both very domesticated cats. It overjoyed me to
play the role of “Dad.” I took especial
delight in giving Jamie her first bath as Angie found it a challenge to handle a
squirming wet and soapy infant. Marriage and fatherhood suited me, and although
Angie missed her family very deeply, being a wife and a mother pleased her.
We willingly surrendered ourselves to the role of
parenting, wholeheartedly. We devoted all our time to Jamie, relishing every
new day in her life. Call us prejudiced, but we felt our child to be the most
beautiful baby on earth, a real blue-ribbon winner.
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