There was of course a fourth possibility. Maybe, rather than extra-sensitive antennae, I had an overdeveloped worry gland; maybe I wasn’t so much picking up on subtle undercurrents as conjuring up paranoid fantasies. Maybe he was just a guy and didn’t wear his heart on his sleeve. Maybe he was occupied – or preoccupied – with his start-up business, his music gigs, his soccer games, his wife, his friends, and now, his baby, and parents were not his top priority. Maybe, in other words, there was nothing wrong at all.  

 

Nah. If there was a problem, as I was convinced there was, I thought this baby could be the solution: the path to a warmer, closer bond. I just needed to be, with Yoni and Naomi as with my stepdaughter—the mother of my first two grandkids—the epitome of unobtrusive helpfulness. I’d devised the perfect recipe, too. I would be, I decided, loving and available but not needy, capable but not commanding, supportive but not opinionated.

 

Yoni invited me to visit the three of them at the hospital. I went to Whole Foods first searching for the apparent holy grail of grandmotherhood: the organic herbal lactation tea Naomi insisted would be there. It took me twenty-seven minutes to locate it. Then I bought as much bottled water as my arms could carry. Never mind my sciatica. Selfless would be my middle name.

​

I arrived at their private hospital room, stooped from the weight of the water and trying not to grimace from the back pain.

​

Naomi was surprisingly mobile and alert. Yoni was animated. And the baby was crinkly and tomato-red but adorable. She was in Naomi’s arms, suckling. I studied her face, stroked her spiky black hair and kissed the new parents on both cheeks.

 

“How are you both?” I asked.

​

Naomi laughed.

  

“It’s been a hairy couple of days,” Yoni said.

 

“Tell me!” I said. The details I’d gotten along the way were pretty sparse.

​

“Let me,” Yoni said to Naomi. “I mean, I know it was your labor and delivery, Naomi, but I was more clear-headed so I can explain better.”

​

Really, Yoni? I thought. Have I taught you nothing? But I didn’t go there. I smiled, let Yoni fill me in on the parts he hadn’t shared by phone and gently encouraged Naomi to interject with her admittedly more limited, female perspective. It had indeed been a long, hard labor with several scary complications. The baby was now being watched carefully. Nursing was a challenge. But they were great with each other and their new infant.

​

I was a proud momma and grandma.

​

“Can I hold her?” I asked when Naomi took a break from nursing.

​

“Can you sterilize your hands first?” Naomi asked. “Over there.” She pointed at the hand sterilizer on the wall.

​

I did.  Of course: I should have thought of that myself. I sang "Happy Birthday to You"—the whole song—twice to myself while I sanitized. Happy Birthday, New Baby! Then I reached out my arms.

​

“She can be fussy,” Yoni warned.

​

“That’s OK,” I said.

​

“Are you sure you know how to hold her?” Yoni asked.

​

“I think so,” I said, smiling. I’d heard about this syndrome before from several friends. I was not going to get defensive; I would go with the flow.

​

“Do you have her head?” Yoni asked.

​

“I have her head,” I responded with a reassuring smile to show I was not in the least offended. I didn’t remind him that somehow he survived three decades without major brain damage from maternal head dropping. And that my step-daughter had left me alone with her babies without my contributing even one iota to the national statistics on infant mortality.

​

I cradled the teeny chicken-legged person and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

​

The chicken squawked.

​

“You never kiss a newborn baby on the face!” Yoni shouted.

​

“Really?” I asked. Another new rule since my day, but no problem. They were just being earnest new parents; I understood. “Okay; sorry.”

​

I asked if the baby had a name. They listed a few options. One was Orly; another was Aria, like the operatic songs Yoni’s grandpa used to sing. “They’re all beautiful,” I said. 

​

“Can you talk to my parents?” said Naomi with a smile. “They hate every one of them.”

​

I smiled. “I am determined not to be that kind of mother-in-law or grandma,” I said. “This is so totally your decision!”

​

“I think we’ll go with Orly then,” they said. “Orly Esther.”

​

“That’s lovely,” I responded. It had a good ring and a good meaning; Orly was Hebrew for “my light,” more or less, and Esther not only the name of my long-deceased aunt, a lovely woman, but the name of an ancient queen whose bravery and smarts had saved the entire Jewish people from genocide. There was a whole megillah written about that Esther.

 

I refrained from expressing satisfaction that the two of them were choosing a name that honored our Jewish heritage. And I certainly didn’t mention that international travelers might confuse her for an airport in Paris.

​

I was off to a good start.

​

*

 

A few weeks later, after Yoni went back to work, Naomi invited me over. With Orly nursing one hour out of every two and fussing the other, Naomi was a wee bit worried about juggling child care and, say, managing her personal hygiene. Or evacuating her bowels.

​

Great! This was my chance to prove myself invaluable.

​

When I arrived, Naomi was sitting on her nursing chair by the couch in the living room with Orly latched on to her otherwise completely exposed breast. “What can I do?” I asked.

​

”Nothing,” Naomi said. “Just sit.”

​

I sat. She caught me up on the latest parent and infant struggles. Feeling just a wee bit awkward and self-conscious in the presence of my daughter-in-law’s bare nipples, I looked up, down and around her—anywhere but straight ahead—and found, to my acute distress, an imperfection in my line of sight. I stood up again and reached over Naomi’s head to helpfully pick a dead leaf off the plant hanging above her.  

 

I am not remotely compulsive, mind you. That must have been someone else you saw straightening the pictures in random doctors’ offices or swatting her husband’s hand away as he tried to stop her from surreptitiously plucking white hairs off the black sweaters of a stranger sitting in front of her at synagogue.

 

Unfortunately, the leaf I attempted to pluck off Yoni’s and Naomi’s plant was stubbornly attached to the stem. The plant came crashing down, and with it, the pot. The pot landed on its side, magically intact, on the carpet. But half the plant landed on the armrest of the chair, the other half on the sofa beside it. Soil scattered everywhere.

 

“Oh my God, I’m so sorry!” I said.

 

“That’s all right; no worries,” said Naomi with a smile that struck me as a little forced. She paused, then continued: “I’m just glad the pot didn’t land on Orly’s head.” 

 

I cringed. “Me, too!”

 

“The DustBuster is right over there,” Naomi said, pointing. “But maybe you should put the big pieces of soil in a plastic bag first. The bags are under the kitchen sink.” 

 

I righted the pot and reinserted the two pieces of plant. I got a bag, gathered the clumps of dirt and deposited them inside. Then I grabbed the DustBuster with my other hand. I pushed random buttons until, with Naomi’s guidance, I managed to turn the damn thing on. I pointed it at the floor and began cleaning up the dirt.  

 

I didn’t get very far. Within seconds, like a magnet, the DustBuster, in my right hand, attracted the plastic bag, still in my left, and began sucking it up. Whoosh!

 

“Oh my God!” I shouted, searching in vain for the off button as the bag went further up the DustBuster cavity.

 

“The off button is over there,” Naomi shouted over the vroom. “On top!”

​

I found it. I turned it off. All but the handles of the plastic bag were now stuck inside.

 

“Don’t worry,” said Naomi wearily, still busy nursing. “I’ll take care of it later.”

 

“No, no; I will,” I insisted. I searched for the “open” button and, with difficulty, pulled the bottom of the DustBuster off the top.

 

The contents went flying out. Everywhere. This time, not just the soil that I had started cleaning up, but the cat litter and everything else that had been vacuumed up in their apartment over the past three weeks.

I surveyed the mess.

 

“Oh my God; I am so sorry!” I said again.

 

Naomi said, “No problem,” but her tone of voice was more, like, “Fuck.” She said: “I’m just a little worried about the bacteria from the cat litter all over the nursing chair.”  

 

“I’ll clean it up,” I said.

 

“No, no, just leave it; I’ll take care of it later,” said Naomi.

 

Uh-uh. I was not about to leave the mess I made for my still-sore and exhausted daughter-in-law to clean up in the few moments that she was not wearing her baby. I grabbed another plastic bag. I filled it with the clumps of soil. Then I grabbed the reassembled DustBuster. Fortunately, this time I didn’t even have to ask Naomi for instruction; I remembered how to turn it on, all by myself. A breakthrough! 

 

Unfortunately, I did not remember to take the bag of dirt out of my other hand.  

 

Once again, the DustBuster reached for the bag and began sucking it up. Once again, I scrambled, looking in my renewed panic for the button I had just found, all the while watching the plastic bag go further and further up the nozzle.

 

“Oy,” I said after finally turning it off for the second time. “What a mess. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”

 

Naomi sighed. “Don’t worry about it,” she said wearily. Then she looked me hard in the eyes. “Now, please: just leave it alone.”

 

I heard her, loud and clear. But I was on a mission. “Then what can I do to help?” I asked.

 

“Nothing,” said Naomi. “Really.  Nothing.”

​

*

​

Weeks later, I was relieved to be invited back. By then Yoni and Naomi were both calmer parents and better slept. They were even cooking. They asked me to stay for dinner after putting Orly to bed and they offered me wine.

 

I am not much of a drinker; I generally don’t like the taste of alcoholic beverages.  But this was white wine and Yoni said it was pretty sweet. So I let Yoni pour half an inch of wine into my glass before dinner and replace it during dinner.

 

Did I mention I am not much of a drinker? A little bit goes a long way with me.

 

So after dinner, feeling unusually relaxed for me, almost as Zen as I felt after my last colonoscopy, I told Yoni and Naomi I was taking a class called “First Person Funny.” I said that for my first assignment, I wrote about the Disaster of the Falling Plant. I said that the premise of the piece was that I felt I needed to make up for past mistakes with Yoni and prove myself a good mother as well as a good mother-in-law and grandmother.

 

Yoni said, “You have nothing to prove.”

 

Naomi said, “Yoni’s pretty well adjusted. I don’t think you scarred him any.”

 

Yoni said, “That’s right. I had a pretty good childhood. And who doesn’t have a difficult adolescence? I have no issues with you, Mom.”

 

Wow. So maybe I could relax after all.

 

Nah.