Top Ten Breeder Truths

My last post covered the Top Ten Breeder Myths, so I thought it was only fair I gave equal space to the many things we non-parents love when it comes to other people's kids:

10. Buying Girl Scout cookies from your child.
9. Buying Girl Scout cookies from your child.

8. Buying Girl Scout cookies from your child.

7. Buying Girl Scout cookies from your child.

6. Buying Girl Scout cookies from your child.

5. BuyingGirl Scout cookies from your child.

4. Buying Girl Scout cookies from your child.

3. Buying Girl Scout cookies from your child.

2. Buying Girl Scout cookies from your child.

1. Buying Girl Scout cookies from your child.

Top Ten Breeder Myths

I am aware this will make me look like I really hate kids and parents.  I really don't.  And yet these things are all still true.

10. Displaying a Baby on Board sign will make people drive safer.

9. Your friends don't mind if you bring your kids to their wedding reception.

8. Your friends don't mind if you bring your kids to dinner at their house.

7. Other restaurant patrons don't mind if your child is badly behaved because they understand you really need to get out of the house for a grown-up night out.

6. Breastfeeding in public sans blanket is a beautiful act to witness.

5. Your friends are interested in hearing about "the cutest thing" your child did this week.

4. Your childless/free co-workers feels no resentment when you leave early to pick up your kids.

3. Using your kid's picture as your Facebook profile picture is ironic and cute.

2. Your friends can't wait until you post your next ultrasound picture. 

1. A stroller gives you right of way.  Everywhere.

Barren in Books: Eat, Pray, Love and the Auntie Brigade

And so, inevitably, Barren in Books arrives at Eat, Pray, Love.  Elizabeth Gilbert’s bestseller came out right around the time I was grappling with my own decision about whether or not to have children, and I guess this is one of the reasons I liked it so much. Millions of other women liked it too, which, by extension must mean that even if these women had kids, the decision about whether or not to have them is something a lot of us relate to. Of course Gilbert’s book was about other things too, but it was the first book I remember reading where childlessness was laid out as a reasonable choice rather than the unfortunate outcome of being a lesbian or a spinster or -- the worst and most pitiable -- infertile. What I find most amazing about that statement is that I was thirty-five when I read the book.  THIRTY-FIVE.  At the risk of sounding immodest, I will point out that I had read rather a lot of books up until then.

In her follow-up book, Committed, Gilbert asserts that she is a happy member of the "Auntie Brigade." She even outlines a sort of defense for the necessity of this childless community of women:

In leaving no descendants ... childless aunts do tend to vanish from memory after a mere generation, quickly forgotten, their lives as transitory as butterflies. But they are vital as they live, and they can even be heroic. Even in my own family's recent history, there are stories on both sides of truly magnificent aunties who stepped in and saved the day during emergencies. Often able to accrue education and resources precisely because they were childless, these women had enough spare income and compassion to pay for lifesaving operations, or to rescue the family farm, or to take in a child whose mother had fallen gravely ill. I have a friend who calls these sorts of child-rescuing aunties "sparents"— "spare parents" — and the world is filled with them.

She goes on to establish its lineage throughout history, including Jane Austen and the childless aunts who raised Leo Tolstoy, Truman Capote, and the Brontë sisters.

As much as I liked both of Gilbert's books, the Auntie Brigade is not a sisterhood of which I particularly feel a part. For one thing my sister, my only sibling, has no children, and at forty-four -- the lesbian part is less of an impediment these days -- that is unlikely to change. My three closest childhood friends all have children but only one has daughters, and I am really only interested in the girls. It’s not just that their clothes are way cuter and the present giving opportunities are therefore much more interesting, which they are. It’s as much about the fact that little boys are alien creatures to me. In fairness they are as disinterested in me as I am in them and our engagement is usually limited to that moment at the end of my visit when their mother traps them and prods them to give me a goodbye kiss before they run screaming back to whatever fort they were building prior to capture. In short, I do not feel obligated make up for my childlessness by assuming my appointed role as the lovable, generous, if sometimes eccentric – think Auntie Mame – aunt.

And this sense of duty is the thing that bothers me just the slightest bit about the Auntie Brigade. There is a whiff of an apology, a “look at my good work in the supporting role” about the whole thing. At least this is what I wanted to argue when I started writing this blog some weeks ago.  But the truth is I started investigating college savings plans for my friends' little girls not long after I re-read this part of Gilbert's book; I guess I always did like Auntie Mame.

Other Barren in Books posts:
On Jonathan Franzen's Freedom
On Caitlin Moran's How to be a Woman

The ultimate childfree vacation - Days 7-8: Gallup, New Mexico to Kingman, Arizona to Los Angeles, California

The death march home to Los Angeles continued, this time with driving rain at high altitude, broken only by a stop for breakfast at Denny's in Flagstaff.  After two nights in kitsch motels, I have never been happier to check into a Marriott than I was in Kingman, Arizona.  We used the gym, dawdled on the wifi, and generally reveled in the generic newness of it all.  While lounging by the indoor swimming pool, my husband read an article about Oatman, Arizona, and became charmed with the idea of a small detour to visit the honeymoon suite of Clark Gable and Carole Lombard in this tiny western town.

The next morning we shared our complimentary hotel breakfast buffet with a group of bikers called the Messengers of Recovery.  They shared leather and facial hair with their brethren of the biker genre, but were telling  stories about a friend who had "been to the other side" and seen heaven.  After a winding thirty-mile drive on a tiny road, we were joined in Oatman, Arizona by approximately fifty bikers of the more traditional sort.  We took some pictures but decided it was best not to linger.  In no time we had crossed the border to the promised land.  Our portal: Needles, California.

It took us eight days to cross the country and, despite my aspirations, this was anything but the ultimate childfree vacation.  It was a chore -- needless to say, one I would not recommend that anyone attempt with children.  To make it more of a vacation we should have taken more detours, and there was plenty to see along the way.  My notes of missed opportunities include Johnnie Brock's Dungeon, the Halloween headquarters of Missouri; Darryl Starbird's Custom Car Museum in Fairgrove, Oklahoma; the Top of Texas Catholic Superstore, just outside of Amarillo; the Dinosaur Museum in Tucamcari, New Mexico; and Bearizona, a drive-thru (how American!) wildlife park.  We have one more car to get back to L.A., so who knows, maybe I will see the Jesse James Wax Museum before I die.

...and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time

The ultimate childfree vacation - Day 6: Amarillo, Texas to Gallup, New Mexico

Gallup, New Mexico

Day six started with promise.  As we drove into the Windows-startup screen of a landscape of open skies and flat greenery, my husband blasted the Sirrius Spa station.  It was the kind of music second-rate yoga teachers and masseuses play -- and I always ask them to turn off -- but he was having a moment, and I let him have it.  He was back in the West.

In Albuquerque we stopped in Old Town to stretch our legs and buy postcards.  We had a quiet moment in the adobe church and ate marginal Mexican food on the central square.  It got worse from there.  This is when my husband realized his vision of the American west bore little resemblance to reality, which consisted largely of pock-marked highway, aggressive truck drivers, and tatty Indian jewelry outlets along the otherwise desolate interstate.  We considered stopping in Grants for the night, but the cluster of chain motels and a Walmart (which admittedly I had previously found charming in Columbus, Ohio) masquerading as a town was too depressing to bear, and we continued for sixty miles to Gallup.

Maybe not.

There we checked into the El rancho motel, which had once hosted the cast of several westerns.  Our room was named after Kirk Douglas, and came complete with a wagon wheel headboard and heavy antiseptic smell.  We shared the bar with a long-haul trucker and a group of German cyclists, ate our second Mexican meal of the day in the hotel restaurant, and retired into the arms of Mr. Douglas to rest up for the final leg of our journey. 

The ultimate childfree Vacation - Day 5: Tulsa, Oklahoma to Amarillo, Texas

U Drop Inn in Shamrock, TX

We broke up our drive from Tulsa to Amarillo with a stop in Shamrock, TX, home to the landmark U Drop Inn diner / Conoco station, which apparently featured in the Pixar movie, Cars.  A sweet old lady who had exactly the same accent as my grandmother, who also grew up in the Texas panhandle, sold us postcards at the visitor center and gave a glowing recommendation to Vern’s Steakhouse just across the street.  We opted for Taco Bell, saving ourselves for steak at the Big Texan later that night.

The Big Texan motel is right off the I-40, just before Amarillo.  I had been looking forward to the Texas-shaped swimming pool all day, only to be disappointed when the check-in girl told me it wasn’t open until May.  Why that was so when it was ninety-one degrees outside was unclear.  The good news was that we could check into our room early.  The bad news was that it was 2:00PM and we were by the side of an interstate with nothing to do all afternoon except entertain ourselves at a roadside motel.  The inside of our room was painted concrete block with swinging, saloon style doors to the bathroom, which featured a fringed, ultra-suede shower curtain.  It was another lesson in the fleeting value of irony, and, after a quick tour of the gift shop, we were left with no choice but to belly up to the bar at the adjacent Big Texan steakhouse. 

the Big Texan Steakhouse & Motel, Amarillo, TX

After an aborted attempt to drink a glass of rosé from Lubbock, Texas, and success with two home-brewed honey blonde beers, we sat down to an early dinner in the steakhouse.  We were just in time to see the last fifteen minutes of a man attempting to eat a seventy-two ounce steak in under an hour, the reward for which would be the steak was free.  He was seated at an elevated table in the center of the room, just under the watchful eye of the grill cook.  Our server subsequently told us this was so the cook, Cookie (I swear), could watch out for barfing.  This was a disqualifying offense if done at the table, but acceptable if done in the parking lot.  It also explained the two small garbage pails sitting on the stage.

With ten minutes to go, the contender was declared disqualified due to vomiting.  Thankfully, we were being serenaded by a roaming trio of elderly men doling out The Yellow Rose of Texas for tips when the penalty occurred and failed to notice.  Staged barfing aside, the Big Texan was delicious.  I went to bed with a lead belly, anticipating our arrival in the west the next day.

The ultimate childfree vacation - Day 4: St. Louis, Missouri to Tulsa, Oklahoma

Tulsa VFW

Here’s what you need to know if you are going to drive cross-country, east to west: you hit bottom on day four.  This is when everything becomes a blur of Jesus, fireworks, and adult superstore billboards.  The promise of the West turns into a death march in which you cling to the mid-century kitsch of Route 66 like a promise of salvation, only to find out that irony is a fleeting entertainment.

We ended day four in Tulsa.  We were staying on the outskirts of the city and decided to stretch our legs with a walk into the CBD.  It was dead, so we returned to the neighborhood surrounding our hotel in search of something, anything, more uplifting.  On Cherry Street we discovered a nascent boho scene.  You had to look hard, but it was there: a pub with retro stools, an indie coffee shop with a collective of Mac users surfing the free-wifi while burrowed into second-hand sofas.  We drank our coffee outside on aluminum porch sliders before stopping into the Corner Café on historic Route 66 for dinner. 

Frito Chili Pie

I REALLY wanted to like this place.  There was a server named Bobbi Jean and fried green tomatoes on the menu.  I ordered the tomatoes to start, then doubled down on Frito chili pie.  I am pretty sure I ate half a can of Dinty Moore beef stew over a bag of Fritos before I admitted how gross it tasted.  Still hopeful we could salvage the evening, we headed to the nearby VFW, the only bar we had seen, for a pre-bed beer.  We joined one other couple at the bar; that the woman was celebrating her birthday in this desolate hall just made us more depressed.  I nursed my domestic-imitating-a-foreign-beer and watched a bad sitcom on the giant TV. 

On the way back to the hotel we spotted the “art bar.”  Inside was a cement room hung with oil paintings, mostly of cowboys and Indians.  A square bar, also of cement, dominated the center of the room, and we took two stools with a view of a giant oil painting of Lake Havasu party boats tethered together.  Tulsa must have been getting to me, because I was taken with the artist’s rendition of the dusky sky over the lake.  There was only one other person at the bar, a standard issue hipster sporting a standard issue hipster beard, truckers’ cap and inner tube earrings in each earlobe.  He was busy impressing the barmaid, a sweet girl in a black racer-back tank top and lip ring, with his suitably inaccessible musical selections on the jukebox.  I nursed a beer and took the scene in, but I wasn’t persuaded to wait the hour until karaoke started.

We were ready to leave Tulsa at 6:30AM on day five, but Tulsa wasn’t ready to let us go.  Road works conspired to keep us off the interstate until, on our third attempt, we found an open on ramp.  Later in Oklahoma City we would meet a similar barrage of road works.  We set our sights on Texas, and didn’t look back.