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Before I get into what, if anything, barbies and birth defects have in common, I’d like to mention that I am sitting on my back deck, listening to the birds and gazing at two very luscious weeping cherry trees. I’ve just enjoyed a piece of Amish-raised organic chicken breast that I grilled a la Emily and topped with a puree of tomato, onion and cilantro (okay, salsa!) and some grated cheddar cheese. I am finishing off a glass of Newman’s finest Cabernet (not that impressive) and am watching the clouds jet across the evening sky. One looks like the Warner Brother’s Tasmanian Devil in a three-quarter spin. I’d almost forgot what it was like to name the clouds. I have a bad habit of keeping myself unnecessarily busy.

Maybe I should also mention how I am finding myself in this moment of reverie. This evening, my husband is playing a gig in a very reputable juke joint and Silas decided he wanted to go to bed early. Oh, the sweet silence of sitting solo! I can smell the fresh cut grass and hear the murmur of children in the distance. My Lord! What a wonderful world! (Even with the mosquitoes.)

So, on to barbies and birth defects.

When Silas was born, I noticed, almost immediately, that he had an unusual red lump on his neck about the size of a pea. It has the firmness of cartilage and is shaped like a snail’s shell or a curving fragment of the human ear. We were told by the hospital pediatrician and the resident pediatric surgeon that the bump was a leftover “gill”.

It turns out that the lump is not a gill– not really. It is a branchial cleft cyst. An embryonic birth defect.

It almost pains me to write that– “birth defect” — even though I know it shouldn’t. In fact, until yesterday, when I met with the ENT for the first time, I had never thought of the bump as a birth defect. Although, I suppose, I knew that’s what it was. It’s the linguistics that made the little lump seem so much more monstrous. So much more, well, defective.

Just so you know that I have things in perspective, I must state that understand that, as far as birth defects go, having a son with a branchial cleft cyst is no biggie. Yes, he will have to have surgery as the possibility of a messy abscess is relatively high. But, that’s probably the end of it. A minor surgery. A little scar.

Still, I couldn’t help but cringe when I was searching on the Internet and the word “defect” popped up. In my mind, a defect is something wrong, ugly, dangerous, misshapen, terminal, and grotesque. Perhaps, I also felt a bit guilty. Or, a little like I’d failed somehow.

Guilty? About a lump?!? (Well, it’s actually a branch that could be rather extensive. But, you get my point.)Maybe I don’t have things quite in perspective. Maybe no one does when it comes to their child.

Also, maybe, I am suffering from a case of cultural prejudices and expectations. And, possibly, an onset of acute aestheticitis.

Here’s where I have to admit that when the doctor told me that the surgery was a near necessity (I mean we have the choice but the pros of surgery clearly outweigh the cons), I was relieved.

Relieved? That my son needs surgery?

Not exactly.

I was relieved that I didn’t have to make a another decision (whether or not to circumcise being the first) about having a surgical procedure performed on Silas based solely on aesthetics. I didn’t want to have to decide if society would find the lump on Silas’s neck to be, as the hospital surgeon so eloquently stated, “rather unsightly”.

And here’s where I want to say that I am the kind of person who laughs in the face of these types of silly cultural biases. That I am the kind of person that has the ability to instill in my son a level of self-esteem and self-confidence that would enable him to scoff at those who might scoff at his neck. To raise a child that will love himself exactly as he is.

But then, I have to get real. Yes, I will do my best to ensure that Silas’s self-esteem stays in tact. But, honestly, if the doctor had told me that the cyst was harmless (which he didn’t), but that it would grow with Silas and therefore be an obvious physical malformation (which he did), I would decide to risk the anesthesia and have the lump removed. There, I said it.

So, yes, aesthetics hold some weight with us human beings. But, still, you may be wondering: what the hell does this have to do with Barbie?

No need to hold your breath. I’ll tell you.

My initial reason in titling this piece “Birth Defects and Baby as Barbie” actually had nothing to do with whether or not I would submit my son to surgery based on a physical “imperfection”. I thought of all that material as a clever little side note. I actually started this post thinking about my obsession with baby fashion.

The morning we went to the ENT, we had to get up rather early. My husband couldn’t go with us to the appointment, so he decided to help out by getting Silas ready. With Paul, “helping” means a 57% chance of Silas’s nighttime diaper getting changed and a 97.5% chance that Silas will get correctly strapped into his car seat.

If we were to err on the side of the majority, Paul’s help-out routine would be close to acceptable.

Except, I never take Silas anywhere in his jammies unless it’s absolutely necessary. Actually, I need to take that statement a step further. I never take Silas anywhere in clothes that don’t match… well. Okay, I need to go further still. I make a plan for Silas’s next-day outfit every evening. I plan these outfits according, not to the weather, but to whether or not the cut and color scheme will maximize his attractiveness. And, no, I’m not kidding.

If you knew me better, you’d laugh. This oh-so-Prom-Queen-like confession is coming from a woman who wore her unbrushed, untrimmed waist-length hair in a frayed bun secured by a half-chewed pencil for an entire school year. Oh wait, I have to take this further as well. I showed up at school– more than once!– in thick slate gray tights and a mid-calf-length paisley corduroy jumper (blue and purple) that was an obvious throw away from the 70’s. With the bun and the pencil. Sans make-up. And, I call myself an artiste! (If you couldn’t guess from the school references, I’m a teacher. So, yes, I was an adult when that happened. My mother didn’t do it to me. And, for your information, I’ve given that jumper to the Goodwill and have a hip and happening hair cut now.)

Still, when Paul suggested that Silas venture out-of-doors in a green tie-dye t-shirt with a surfing lizard on it and a pair of off-color baby blue pants with stripes on the hem, I had to put my foot down.

Still, I didn’t want to seem to materialistic. Instead of rushing to the closet and dressing Silas myself, I just demanded that Paul change him. Then, I slunk in a corner with my eyes closed and my fingers crossed hoping that Paul chose something that would bring out the richness of Silas’s eyes.

I should have dressed him myself.

Instead of having to make the excuse that we had a rough morning and that’s why Silas was still in his mismatched pajamas, I found myself apologizing for why Silas was dressed like Liberace. We’re, uhhh, practicing for Halloween. You know, to see what will look the best in, uhhh, well, seven months from now.

I feel like the Liberace descriptor is enough. I won’t go into the nature of the outfit. (A button-down frilly collared shirt that Beethoven might have worn to a Red Neck wedding, brown corduroy pants a size too large with Teddy Bears on the pockets and the cuffs, and fluffy white Adirondack with dancing moose even though it was closing in on 75 degrees. Did I mention the mismatching socks?)

Still, I feel like I’m improving. I could have refused to leave the house. Three months ago, I found myself carrying a step ladder into Silas’s room so I could climb up to the top shelf in his closet for a 20 minute search for a pair of pants that would look just right with his oh-so-trendy top. I had changed his pants three times and still wasn’t satisfied. And, that day, we had no plans to leave home.

Okay. So, now I feel like I’ve made quite the contextual circle. And, I see some distinct areas of my personality that clearly need some work. Still, I am breathing a sigh of relief that Silas’s surgery can wait a few years and that I’ve written this entire piece before the sun officially set.

A toast to evenings alone on the back deck and to the continual journey toward self-awareness!

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 12th, 2008 at 1:40 am and is filed under Favorite Posts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.