mrs. miller takes a stand

by katie perry

        Honey, about this Baby Off. It’s nice and all, to uphold family traditions, and I suppose I believe you when you claim that the Miller Family signature poise and self-confidence are due, in part, to your all having participated when you were babies yourselves, but still. And I’m sure it’s wonderful for the winner and the winner’s parents, honey, and perhaps it really does teach those babies poise and self-confidence, but I’m afraid Sam’s going in for his fourth loss this year and it just breaks my heart, especially since he’s only a month under the four-years-old cutoff.

    I don’t remember much from when I was that age so maybe he won’t either, but what if he does? Imagine, he’s decided to try hypnosis to quit smoking or something, god forbid we raise a smoking baby, and he suddenly recalls the cold blue tile of your Aunt Flora’s kitchen island, chilling him from his little bottom up. He’ll flash back to sitting in line with the other babies, with his beautiful full head of hair, those sweet honey curls, so much fuller already since last year, sitting there while the great aunts and uncles circle like cattle judges at the fair. I see Sam on that counter every Christmas, and this year, his full hair is just going to make him look like an overgrown baby, especially since he sits so tall, not that anyone in your family would even care that he has the best posture of all his peers, no, Aunt Flora would rather look at him and tsk about the hormones in the milk these days, though she isn’t exactly dainty herself and she’s got no hormones to blame it on, if you know what I mean, but anyway. 

    I don’t want to seem angry, honey. I know you Millers all love the Baby Off. And maybe, when the babies grow up, the experience of shrinking from your aunt when she zooms in with her brandy breath (“Oh aren’t you the most precious baby in the Miller family…this year…”) is completely buried, suppressed. Poor little Francesca, the look on her face when Flora kissed her forehead that first year made my heart flop, I sure hope she forgot that one, you said she was just gassy but I know better, I’ve seen Flora’s face up close and it’s unnerving, especially when it’s your wedding day and she’s telling you about your new husband’s old high school girlfriend--high school for Christ!-- the one that got away (but I won’t bring that up again). But I suppose I believe you when you say you don’t remember participating in the Off but have nonetheless felt its positive effects all your life, and I did marry you after all, so how bad could it be?

    So maybe it’s really worse for the adults since we’re old enough to remember every little detail of the competition. I certainly remember the first year, my and  Sam’s first Miller family Christmas. Remember that year? How I vowed after that never to put my Sam in that competition again? We gussied Sam up in that little tuxedo with that adorable red bow tie and took a photo, and we thought he would win hands down but then Francesca showed him up in her jazz dance outfit, not that she could even walk at the time, and won hands down instead? But, and I know you don’t believe me, but I swear some of the scorecards were tampered with. I saw them: Don, June, and Millie’s appeared to have been altered with heavy black scribbles over some of the boxes. No baby should hanging-chad her way to a Baby Off victory, and Francesca may have done just that, that first year, and also last year, but of course that new baby in the intervening year, Rod and Sheila’s little Jack, of course his win was inevitable, he was brand spanking new up there on that counter, couldn’t hold himself up yet, a brand new soft pink sack of baby, cute enough, yes, but not superior. He probably won that one because he suffered howevermany hours in the car with Sheila and Rod to get there, which gives me hope that there’s a reasonable judge in the bunch (it’s too bad we never see the great aunts and uncles, I hardly know them, though I suspect it’s Aunt Millie who’s got the best head on her shoulders…perhaps we should have them for enchiladas and get-to-know-you sometime before Christmas this year).

    Now. We know, don’t we, that even if we hadn’t put Sam in the bear suit the second year or the cowboy suit last year, he was and is still by far the superior baby. So it’s probably that the judges wish not to give him an inflated ego by voting him winner every year, which would also explain why they gave the prize to Francesca again last year, since it’s becoming increasingly apparent that she’ll need all the help she can get in life, though she’s sweet, I’m not saying she’s not a sweetheart. So though a victory perhaps unfairly bestows a sense of superiority on those undeserving babies in order to save them from the painful awareness of their own shortcomings, it’s fine, because every baby deserves to feel superior sometimes, even if it is at the expense of judiciousness and perspective, and so good for our Sam. Still. It breaks my heart to see him on that counter, losing again for the fourth year to some precious or other, god forbid he ever remember the experience, and only a month under the cut-off. I’m going to take a stand, though he is going to look adorable dressed in his surgeon suit, I can’t imagine why he wouldn’t win this year, overgrown or not. Still. 

Katherine Perry is originally from Double Springs, Alabama. She is currently a graduate student in fiction writing at the University of Iowa, where she also teaches courses in literature and creative writing.