Regrets - #148

And the year's accolades.

I’m in bed around 7pm these days, nursing the baby to sleep. My friend Claire laughed at me when I expressed my surprise that we were now, without question, co-sleepers. “Did you really think you were going to have all your pets sleep in your bed and not your kid?”

And so, from 7pm on, I dilly and I dally on my phone intermittently behind the baby’s head. I write things. I consider furniture I won’t buy. I play word games. I feel Finn settle between my feet. Then Link will join us and stretch out by my thigh. Sometime around 8pm, Jibs comes into the bedroom. He jumps onto the other side of the bed, and then I feel his nose against my back as he carefully tucks his bone as close to me as he can get it. Then, he leaves. Jibs does not come back to bed until sometime around 10pm, after Ben has taken him out for his evening business.

Having the bone tucked under my ribs is not exactly comfortable, but it is comforting. A dog, wary of almost all humans, considers me his bone keeper.

People who did not know us very well said we would regret getting a puppy right before having a baby. “It’s too much work,” they all said. “Do you really want to be cleaning up a dog’s pee and poop, too?” We’d lose our minds, they were sure. I thought about the year prior. All we’d done with Snoots and Cooper and Link (in their various states of dying) was clean up animal fluids. All year. The baby was the one climbing on top of the cleaning pile, not the animals, and no one suggested we not keep him. “You’re gonna regret it.”

I am grateful to know myself well, and instead of being bogged down by cautionary tales written in someone else’s voice, I got the puppy.

Regret is one of the big villains in the story of parenthood. If you don’t have kids, won’t you regret it? Most of the childless people I know, in fact all of the ones I can think of, do not regret it. That’s why they didn’t have children. I personally have never been a big regret person. It seems (similar to embarrassment) like a real waste of time, especially since most of our regrets (like our embarrassments) are so small.

Regret ruining a marriage. Regret a hit and run. Regret sabotaging another person’s career to get ahead. Sure. But regret getting a puppy because you’re having a baby? Get real. No one is happier to see this dog than that baby, and do you know what people never regret? A happy baby.

This weekend, the baby will watch as Ben and I collect another regret: more tattoos. We’re visiting friends and family in Taos, New Mexico, and one of those friends is a tattoo artist. Ben has probably 10 tattoos from her already, among his maybe 30 or so. (At how many tattoos do you stop counting? I thought I had 8 and it turns out I have 10.) This time, we’re getting tattoos to honor Woods.

There are tattoos on my body that I would not get today, and people sometimes conflate that notion with regret. But I am not a disappointed parent in myself — I am my own cool aunt, smiling knowingly with age and wisdom. I’m charmed by these crafted ink scars, by their varying naivete and impulsivity, their grand emotions and old commitments.

On my forearms are sister tattoos: on the left is a coyote with a boot in its mouth and on my right is a bobcat wearing a bolo tie. In my imagination, they fought a man who would not cohabitate with them, who sought only to slaughter them, and instead found himself to be the slaughtered one. Once, on a plane as I was stopped in the aisle waiting to walk toward my seat, a girl of about 14 sitting in first class next to what looked like her father asked me what they meant.

“Nature’s reclamation of earth back from man.”

“Cool,” she said as her eyes widened.

“Thanks,” her dad muttered at me, glaring up from his laptop.

Who could regret that, aside from the father who did not give his daughter the window seat? Maybe she’s an aisle girl, like me. Maybe one day I’ll look upon the coyote and bobcat and shake my head. But I’ll remember her.

It’s a risky sport, predicting someone else’s remorse. You might find them malleable, even soluble, blending themselves effortlessly into the opinions of others. They might heed a warning of potential regret with reverence and gratitude, thankful to have observed the principles one person was bold enough to claim as law. Or, you might find them obstinate, somehow always at the opposite end of the magnet. That is, at least, where I often find myself.

Of the very few things I would be willing to hang on the wall of regret, all of them I was encouraged to do. All of them looked and felt comfortable to someone else. And all of them I abandoned in good time, or at least good enough. That’s what most regrets are about, really: time. Time lost, time spent, time you thought you had. The time you didn’t tell someone how you felt. The time you let a friendship drift away. The time you could’ve been a wrangler in Yellowstone, but went to work at a talent agency in San Francisco instead. (Alright, maybe I regret that one.)

The year is closing in, asking for its considerations. I was always married to January 1 being a clean slate, a new beginning. It felt right to end every year with the holiday mix of joyous connection and quiet reverie. Also, my birthday fell on December 31. When the calendar turned, so did I. But for all its ceremony, there was nothing new come January. Only as an adult would I begin to herald the equinoxes as the real turning of time, of chances, of cornering regrets.

Still, the cultural impact of New Year’s Day lingers, and 2024 demands her accolades:

• Best Picture: giving birth, though some say it went on for too long.

• Best Song: the lullaby I wrote for Woods that I often hear Ben humming under his breath.

• Worst Villain: UnitedHealthcare, for their predictably selfish performance.

• Best Villain: “unsubscribes” for their deep torment but minimal impact.

• Best Supporting Actor: Cooper. While he only starred in 2024 for 13 days, his previous 13 years sparkled so brightly as to blind me into tears.

• Best Supporting Actress: the midwife who told us all four of her children co-slept with her and in fact, still do despite her best efforts.

• Best Trip: Costa Rica, where the entire country treated my heaving belly like a gift from God.

• Worst Trip: the one where we road tripped with a 2-month old through 108 degree heat only to get Covid and go home.

• Best Cameo: the anesthesiologist who did not know who Harry Belafonte was.

• Best Comeback: Link, whose butt is now normal and does not leak!

• Didn’t Deserve It: the couch, for what Link’s butt did to it.

• Brightest New Star: Jibs, by a mile.

• Best Decision: Taking real maternity leave.

• Best Co-Star: Ben.

• Best Director: Woods.

• Biggest Regret: none.

I think that’s all you can ask for.

I’m taking next Sunday off so I can spend this holiday curled up with my boys and my books. May the days get longer from here.