Travelers Passing Through
We had a brief but meaningful brush with royalty this week—my cousin, her husband, and their baby, passing through like weary pilgrims in a minivan full of dogs (they have three), baby stuff and oat milk (for the parents not the baby).
A while back my cousin asked me if anything should happen to her husband, would we be willing to raise the baby. Naturally, I said yes. Of course. I said it like I’d just been asked to water a plant. But in my head, I immediately started referring to the child as The Ward, with all the dramatic weight of a Dickensian orphan, minus the rickets and coal dust. – I now call her The Ward.
She’s eight months old, and frankly, adorable in the kind of way that makes you feel both deeply nostalgic and slightly smug about your own past parenting. There’s a painting over my fireplace of Annie, Abbie, and Cam—when Cam was about the same size—and looking at this new baby, I could almost hear the shrieks and stomps of tiny feet on hardwood floors. Cam had the luxury of two four-year-old performance artists constantly spinning and narrating his every movement, like a toddler Greek chorus. It’s a wonder he ever learned to speak over the noise.
I always say, if you’re going to wrap up your small-child parenting years, try to finish strong with two amateur clowns on staff.
Watching this baby made me think about the advice people throw at new parents like T-shirt cannons at a minor league game. I usually keep quiet. Not because I don’t have thoughts—I do, loud ones—but because I’ve learned that the more certain you are about parenting, the more likely your child is to end up living in a yurt and calling you by your first name.
But if pressed, I do have two solid pieces of advice.
The first came from my dear friend Lisa S.— who I describe as Sweet Tea, and to me as one of the only people I’d trust to guide me through a minefield. Lisa had twin girls a week older than Annie and Abbie. She once confessed she felt shorted on the owner’s manual. I then realized mine did not come in the mail either. I remember looking at her during one of those harrowing teenager moments, and asking, “What are we supposed to do?”
She looked at me, stone-cold sober, and said, “You’re going to love them. That’s what we’re going to do.”
It sounded trite at the time—maybe still does—but it turns out that’s really the only instruction that sticks. Every kid is different. Every parent is winging it. You don’t need a perfect plan. You just need to keep loving them even when they’re being unlovable, which, spoiler alert, is often.
The second bit of wisdom is this: When your baby hits about a year, they will imprint on something. A blanket, a doll, a weird plush lobster from a gas station. Your job is to spot the one and immediately acquire no fewer than four of them. This is not optional. This is survival.
Annie and Abbie got a set of soft rag dolls as babies—one blue with stars, one pink with hearts. We named the blue one Star, because subtlety has never been our thing, and the pink one Mimi. I thought they were cute. Abbie, however, fell madly in love. By the time I realized Star was her soulmate, the dolls were no longer in stores, and this was pre-Amazon, so “buying another” was not an option.
We made a strict rule: Star did not leave the house unless escorted by a military convoy or we were fleeing a natural disaster. Star got worn down to threads, had socks sewn onto her feet, and once got an iron-on patch on her butt that melted her tiny polyester behind. At that point, Star was hand-wash only and treated like an elderly houseguest with a weak bladder.
Cam, being the youngest, benefited from my now-PhD-level knowledge of child attachments. When he bonded with a blue fluffy blanket—creatively named Fuzzies—I ran out and bought six. SIX. I stored them like rare wines. I rotated them so the smells matched. To this day, Cam pretends he’s over it, but I noticed last week that when he came home, he made his bed and stacked all his Fuzzies neatly at the edge—like some weird emotional sandbagging against adulthood.
So yes. My parenting advice, if forced at knifepoint, would be: Love them, and stockpile their emotional support objects like a doomsday prepper with a sentimental streak. Also: washability is non-negotiable.
Whatever you do, don’t let them see the duplicates. That’s how legends die.
