Free Motherhood Made a Man Out of Me by Karen Karbo

noticed.
    Stella had a cry that sounded like a cross between an opera star in deep mourning and an engine that wouldn’t start. Aaanh-aaanh-aaanh-aaanh- AAANH / Aaanh-aaanh-aaanh- aaanh- AAANH!
    â€œStella, stop it! Stop it! Shut up! ” I covered my ears with my hands. Even then it seemed overdramatic, but there you go.
    This wasn’t the worst of it, telling my precious, my dearest, to shut up for no good reason other than my feet were wet and I had lost my patience. I hated to admit it, but I agreed with Audra. How square is that? It does takes two people to raise a child. Actually, I agreed with Hillary Clinton even more. It takes a village, a village of grandmothers willing to use a Gold Card to buy a wardrobe of cheaply made baby T-shirts that the child would outgrow after wearing each of them exactly once. It took the village treasury.
    I felt myself getting teary-eyed, told myself to knock it off, which only made me feel worse. While being with a child may make you young again, allowing you to experience the world through a child’s perceptions—have the burnished, catcher’s mittsized maple leaves of autumn ever seemed so splendid? When was singing ever so much fun? Yawning, belching, the swamp-like gurgles of the empty stomach: has anything ever been so hilarious?— raising a child makes you old old old. By old I mean responsible, and by responsible I mean stodgily concerned with money. Suddenly you need money for everything, none of which is Donna Karan or a day of beauty at a local spa. None of which is even, in my case, a decent pair of underpants, or a trip to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned.
    You peer at the tender pink gums of your little one and try to read them as you would tea leaves: Is major orthodontia in your future? You watch him toddle across the living room, pitch a Beanie out of his crib, and find yourself wondering: Is there a God, in the form of a full-ride sports scholarship to some prestigious university?
    These are the times that try women’s souls, especially the soul of the enlightened woman, the good, competent woman, who chose her mate because he picked up his socks, put down the seat, could cook a decent piece of fish and wash a wool sweater without shrinking it, laughed at her jokes, appreciated the fact she could do a swan dive and he couldn’t. Nice guys no longer finish last; they are snapped up by women who need a mate and not ameal ticket. Until there’s a baby, who does need a meal ticket, not to mention someone to feed her the meal, then wipe the rest of it off the wall.
    I couldn’t follow the line of this reasoning much further than this. All I knew was that I suddenly had the feeling that Mary Rose had—how retro this sounds, but I can’t help it—landed a big fish. Ward was in love with her, wanted this baby, made six figures a year—
    Suddenly, there was a knock on the window. I leapt, shrieked, which stopped Stella crying instantly. Audra’s face, dewy, recently facialed, peered in at us. She waggled her eyebrows and blinked her eyes madly at Stella. She had single carat diamond studs in her ears, I noticed. I rolled down the window, which always stuck halfway down. I peered out over the edge of the glass, like a freedom fighter peering out of the bunker.
    â€œWe should have lunch sometime.”
    â€œWe should?”
    â€œLet me phone you next week. We need to catch up.”
    â€œThose are lovely earrings, Audra,” I said.
    â€œThese?” Her hands flew to her earlobes, where she twirled the studs around as if she were adjusting the dials of a ham radio. She leaned closer. “They’re CZ,” she stage whispered. “Don’t tell Hank. He thinks he bought them for me for our fortieth. He did buy diamonds. Then I took them back and bought these instead.”
    I didn’t ask why she didn’t want the diamonds, or what she did with the extra cash, but it brought to mind