James Bond

So I just saw the new James Bond movie, Casino Royale. Now, of course, I am enamored by Daniel Craig, the new JAMES BOND and feel like my life is just so horribly drab in comparison. I often do this, I let my fantasy life take over. But I do love to travel. I do love to try new things. This James Bond movie was special in some other ways. The female love interest wasn’t the usual bimbo–she was brainy, beautiful in a subtle way, and was James Bond’s equal.

 I was never one to fantasize about characters in movies, and still really don’t. I just seem to be having trouble (and one would say that it’s in an on-going sense) reconciling my general nature with motherhood. Drinking fancy martinis, travel, excitement and danger don’t really go hand-in-hand with motherhood. Not that I’ve ever been one to really court danger, but my pre-mom life was very spontaneous, certainly contained many risks, leaps of faith, lots of welcome change and naturally, adventure. But, given all that, I am really a very practical person.

The truth is, I love being a mother. I really do. Just having children is, truly, an adventure in itself. Ask any parent. It’s incredible to watch them grow and develop. To see their personalities emerge. And, the whole parental undertaking is a risk and a leap-of-faith because you don’t really know how things will turn out. There are so many unknowns. There are the children. There is one’s general parenting style, values, etc. There are circumstances over which we have no control. For example, My husband and I were happily living in California waiting for our first baby to be born. Then suddenly, five days before the baby was born, my husband’s whole (I say whole but there were just three employees or so) company went belly-up. Kaboom, no job. That was it. He had no job. I had been doing freelance work so had no job to go back to. The economy, at the time, was abysmal. So there you have it. Two unemployed people and a brand newborn baby to take care of.

Boy, was that baby cute. We named him Jasper. Jasper means “precious treasure” and the description is very accurate. He helped himself be born by gently screwing his head back and forth until it made its appearance in the world. Then, he looked to the left, then the right, very calmy and very observantly. He’s still like that, and he’s almost five. There we were, two unemployed parents with lots of time to look after our new little guy.

Eventually we emerged through the fog of mommy, daddy, baby and no places to go or things to do. Prior to that, we took daily walks to our favorite cafe, “Royal Coffee” in Rockridge, and drank lattes while the baby slept. Then we would take a long walk. Sometimes we would eat really delicious pastries from a bakery a few doors down from the cafe. We took naps; individually, as a family, mom or dad with the baby. But of course that couldn’t last forever. So, Jim looked for a job in his field. He thought about opening a pub and wrote a business plan. He considered becoming a realtor. I nursed Jasper constantly, changed lots of diapers and suffered from sleep-deprivation-induced hallucinations. Finally, we sold our little house for less than we’d hoped for and did the only thing that made any sense at the time. We moved east to live with my parents. AAAAAGGGGGHHHHH. That was pretty much the last thing we thought we’d ever do.

So how does all this relate to James Bond? Well, give me a moment. I look up from the fast-moving fog around me, the flurry of being a mommy, of choices we’ve made, of things that have happened to us as a family. I see the things I have control over, and increasingly, the things I don’t have control over. Overall I’m happy with my choices but there were so many and they happened so quickly. Now we have a great life, healthy kids and WOW, I think, so much has changed in such a short time. My life is structured around bed times and nap times and bath times and meals and certain activities. It’s a good life, but it’s not really about me any more, for now anyway.

Now I think I understand my grandmother and why she talked about soap-opera characters as though they were people she really knew. It was an escape from her real life. I really understand escapism. I can see a James Bond movie and watch him kill people willy-nilly and then end up in a gondola in Venice with a brilliant and beautiful lover looking to a life of excitement and romance and I can sigh and say oooh-ahhh. We could go to Venice if we really, really wanted to. But it’s less fun if you’re worried about pee-pee accidents and kids not liking the food and meltdowns in public.

For now I can spend my days changing diapers and finding lost toys, kissing bruised foreheads and reading stories. But there’s always time at night for a martini, shaken, not stirred.