W(h)ine

Spent the weekend travelling the Wine Road in Alsace with a friend from Frankfurt who had a baby a year and a half ago and needed a break.

It was difficult for me to listen to her complain about how hard it was to take off the baby weight when she’s currently a size eight. Over the two and a half days we spent together, she consumed: a Croque Monsieur, mozzarella “beignets” with sauce (really just fancy fried mozzarella sticks) followed by an entrée that included sausage and ham, an ice cream cone a day, croissants, a raspberry macaroon, a French ice cream and meringue-based dessert (on top of the day’s ice cream ration), lots of bread, and of course, plenty of Alsatian wine.

Besides that and her constant need to stop in baby clothing and toy stores, we had a good time -- one day even renting bikes (at my suggestion!) and cycling between wineries. And she spoke a lot about the baby, but only because I was quizzing her about it. She’s a friend from Washington DC who wasn’t allowed a work permit when her husband got a job in Germany, so she’s learned German (hers is more fluent than her husband’s) and had a baby. Only in recent years have I begun to think I might have a baby if ever I got married (for years I swore I’d never have one), and listening to her made me reconsider yet again. The hours and hours and hours spent entertaining and cooking for and looking after a little being who does not, in her words, give much back sounds both frightening and horrible. She said on her last visit to the work permits office, she wanted to beg them for the stamp, telling them she didn’t want to take a job away from a German – just that she absolutely had to get out of the house for a little while.

Her story reminds me of a brilliant writer friend of mine who recently had a baby. There was no problem this girl couldn’t solve; nothing she couldn’t make happen. A. was convinced that looking after a tiny baby couldn’t be as hard as people said it was – that mothers must just like to whine.

Shortly after her son was born I started getting humbling emails from her at strange hours of the night. “It is every bit as hard as people say it is,” she wrote. “In fact, it is harder. I can’t wait to go back to work.”

When I told my friend about what A. had written, she paused and said: “Well, she can’t be doing too badly if she has time to email.”