Watching the new “Babies” documentary I wasn’t just struck by the united cuteness of the four babies we traced over a year’s course- from Mongolia, Africa, Japan and San Francisco respectively- but by their vastly different habitats and how their acceptance to their natural environments- be it hut or glass skyscraper- bucks our belief that as parents, we must provide a germ-free, highly-entertaining shelter only unto which they will thrive. The babies in South Africa had nary a book, toy or even a piece of furniture in sight. The women, who ruled their roost with a milky breast and and a merry laugh, never seemed to move from their seated spots outside. With their huts as their chair backs and the uncovered ground as their cushions, they chatted with each other while the babies tottled over, nursed and romped in the dirt in front of them. The babies often used their siblings as jungle gyms. Embraced dog’s licking tongues in lieu of stuffed animals. No Goodnight Moon here or baby bumpers. At one point a baby, looking for some entertainment, finds an animal bone and with a Georgia O’Keefe intensity, holds it up to the sky before happily gnawing on it.
The Mongolian baby’s domed hut- while small- was strangely beautiful inside with an Oriental carpet laid across the floor and rose patterned silky fabrics draped across the rudimentary walls as if the parents, knowing their baby would lack for playthings, would have beauty to entertain its eye. The baby was more or less free to roam at will- often he’d survey his farm- with herds of cows deftly stepping over his little diape-rless body- with the pride of a king observing his opulent kingdom.
Robert Novogratz from Sixx design- and father of seven children- has upped his brood and moved them from one fabulously renovated Manhattan house to another. If any kids in the world have been exposed to great design and style, it is the Novogratzs. Basketball courts on roof tops, bowling alleys in basements, they’ve seen it all. One time the family had to rent a rather dumpy place while waiting for their new pad to be finished. The saving grace for the kids was an old gum ball machine in the lobby. Novogratz writes that the kids still talk about that magical time at the apartment because of that gum ball machine.
One year, just before Memorial Day weekend, we heard from a real estate agent that someone very much wanted to rent our lake house for the entire summer. They would pay us enough that it merited looking at whatever inventory was left on the lake to rent ourselves. There’s was one left: a moldy, dark, WASP-y cottage, surrounded by gloomy pine trees on the outside and acres of green shag carpeting, shaggier furniture and appliances from the Carter administration within. Eric and I looked at each other and shook our heads. It wasn’t worth leaving our sunny haven across the water. Above our heads we could hear the boys merrily running to and from the bed rooms that housed creaky bunk beds tucked under slanted ceilings with peeling paint. “Time to go!” we called.
They ran down the crooked little staircase and breathlessly asked: “We’re already leaving?” We explained. “But why?!” they cried, “This place is great!!!”