Free Domestic Affairs by Joyce Maynard Page A

nowhere. With about as much to show for all our battles on the subject as I have to show for all those sixteen thousand disposable diapers now lying somewhere at the bottom of our town dump.
    During our daughter’s babyhood, when we were at our most broke, I harbored the fantasy (shared by half the mothers in America, I’ll bet) that she might make diaper commercials. Where was there a cuter, more adorable baby? Who could resist her—or whatever brand of diaper she’d wear? If she would just do—in front of a camera—what she did for me in our living room (putting the diaper on her head, kissing the baby on the diaper box), she might earn herself a college education. But we lived in the country—no ad agencies, no talent scouts within a hundred-mile radius. So her antics in diapers went unrecorded by everyone but her father and me. And I’m sure it was all for the best.
    Then one by one our children left diapers behind them. I am a sentimentalist about every aspect of our children’s lives, and a historian of their days, whose tendency it is to save physical artifacts (a baby tooth, the first scrawl that could be said to resemble a human face, even the plastic clip from Audrey’s umbilical cord), and if I could have known, when I was putting it on, that this particular diaper would be the last one this child ever wore, I might even have shed a tear over its absorbent quilted layers. But of course that’s never how it is when a child is giving up diapers. One day he stays dry. Then another. And suddenly it occurs to you, it’s been three days since you’ve bothered to put a diaper on him, even when you go out. And the next thing you know, you’ve got marigold seedlings on what used to be the changing table and you’re buying a six-pack of Alvin and the Chipmunks briefs, size 2.
    A few months ago that moment arrived at our house with our youngest son Willy. And though I never go so far as to say he is our last child, and I always harbor the hope that sometime there will again be energy and space in our lives for one more, this particular round of toilet training certainly feels like a particularly momentous one. The end of an era. A graduation, not just for Willy, but for Steve and me too. It seems totally appropriate, then, that the moment should be marked by a rather extraordinary event, and it was. Here is the story:
    I am a believer in the idea of rewarding children, during the early stages of toilet training, with prizes for peeing in the pot. In the past, I have used goldfish crackers, balloons, plastic farm animals, and once—when I was really desperate—M&M’s. This time around, Willy’s prizes were tiny pink plastic figures currently much coveted by little boys across the nation, called Muscle Men. Every time he made it to the toilet on time, he got one; and though Muscle Men carry the fairly hefty price of around a quarter apiece, until one particular day when he was two years and a few months old, Willy’s performance in the bathroom wasn’t putting much of a strain on our budget. All day long I was mopping up puddles on the floor, while Willy smiled sorrowfully, commenting, “That’s life.”
    Then in a single day everything changed. He woke up announcing that he wanted to go to the bathroom, and all morning long he kept his pants dry. That afternoon I took him shopping—wearing briefs, not diapers—and there were no accidents. On the ride home, a trip of about thirty miles, Willy suddenly piped up, “I need to pee.” So naturally I slammed on the brakes and pulled over into the breakdown lane of Interstate 93. “I’m going to get another Muscle Man,” Willy sang happily as I unbuckled his seat belt and led him down the embankment in some tall grass by the side of the highway. And my heart sank, because I had left home without my supply of Muscle Men. I had no reward.
    He pulled down his pants. And just as he was finishing, and we were both studying the ground, we spotted it. Nearly