We've been teaching Elliot to take a bottle lately, and it's a rough time. When you've only every sucked milk from a real human breast, it's tough to accept the idea that the same stuff can come out of stiff plastic doohickey.
But I'm kind of enjoying it. Because for the first time, the burdens of parenthood fall on me. Every night, we wait until Elliot is in a good mood, and then Hannah goes into another room and closes the door. And Elliot and I play around with the bottle.
The key, I've found, is not trying to jam it down his throat. I dab it on his lips, let him play with it a little, make it a toy. Try and get him to take a swallow a few drops, so that at least the point --- this is to ingest nutrition! --- gets across.
But pretty soon he will have to go a full eight hours with nothing but the bottle. So I'm trying to step up my game. I'm pushing him harder. I'm forcing him to actually drink from it, not just play with it. And that part hasn't been going as well.
It's more than just dislike of the nipple. It's outrage. Wait, you want me to drink from this plastic thing? This is not a breast, why would I drink from this? And the more he struggles the more indignant he gets. How could even THINK I would take nutrition from this thing? The presumption! How dare you!
And as I hold him, staring down into his angry red face, I find myself feeling an unexpected emotion: respect. I'm proud of my son for fighting off the bottle, even as I'm the one shoving it down his throat. I've been trying to think about why this is.
Like most of us, I have plenty of frustrations with plastic, ersatz world we live in. I've shouted at my computer screen on a beautiful sunny day. I've sputtered at the robot-phone that can't understand my words. But, also like most of us, I've accepted it. I've learned how to navigate, and I've put that red fist-clenched rage in a deep dark place. (Because in the end, where else can you put rage directed toward a robot-phone?)
So Elliot's indignation toward the plastic nipple mirrors my own feelings toward a million other things in the world. And I love him for it.
Now, I admit that this is a massive projection on my part. He's a baby who doesn't like his bottle, and I should probably let the psychoanalysis stop there.
But I can't help but wonder if maybe that's when it all went wrong. That moment when you took the plastic nipple in your mouth, when you accepted something fake in the place of something real; when you settled for the construct, the mock-up, the simulacrum. That was when it started. You knew it was inferior, unworthy of you. You hated that plastic nipple, and you knew you deserved better, but in the end you were hungry. In the name of expediency you settled for something you didn't want.
Is it really such a leap from that first plastic nipple to that first corporate job?
We all have to suppress our outrage, that's life in modern society. We make small talk with irritating co-workers, we pay $3 ATM fees, we say "don't worry about it" when someone cancels at the last minute. In the same way, Elliot will suppress his rage toward this nipple. He'll grow so accustomed to it that he'll wonder why he ever found it distasteful. Every once in a while it'll irk him, but he'll think hey, these annoyances are part of life. You have to make little compromises to get through your day.
So rage on, little Elliot. Don't go quietly into that future, that future filled with emotional suppression. For this brief four month-old moment, remain who you are. A plastic nipple is just the first of a million strange things this world is about to throw at you. You will have to give in to most of them. But for now, go ahead and fight it. Of all people on earth, only you have lived a life completely free of compromise. Keep it up. Your impulse redeems us all.
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