Pluto

After we told my parents we were having twins, my father wrote us this long email of largely un-solicited and overwhelming advice. One point he made was that, while in previous generations a father only really started to bond with his child once the baby was born, ultrasound technology now allows both parents to have a common experience to help them bond with the babies. This didn't really happen with our 7-week scan, where we found out there were two (two?!?!) rice grains with beating hearts in there. But at around 12 weeks we went in for another, more advanced scan, and those two rice grains had gotten quite big, with enormous heads and flailing limbs, and they were gyrating away.

After that, my husband did sort of bond with them. . . in a way. He'd say, "Hey, who am I?" Then he'd lay down in the bed and flail around, arching his back the way they were doing when we saw them on the little TV in the doctor's office. It was funny. At least, in some weird way, a little paternal bonding had taken place.

So it was inevitable A. would give them names too. While eating nuts one day (I was protein-crazy during pregnancy), I commented that the "babies" were probably only as big as a cashew nut. Actually, as A. pointed out, they were probably a lot bigger by then. But the concept stuck, and they got the nicknames Kaju (cashew) and Kishmish (raisin).

And once they had names, I guess it was inevitable that A. would start talking to them as well. But he never got into the "let me tell you all my hopes and dreams for your future" kind of talks. Instead, he'd ask them about their days, their plans for the future, their memories of the past. He'd also provide the baby voices, responding to his own questions:

A. (normal voice): I heard you babies had your picture taken today.
A. (high voice): Yes, Papa. That doctor took our naked pictures on the ultrasound and he did not take our permission.
A.: Kaju, is that true?
A. Yes, Papa. We did not have time to get dressed properly. He took nangu-pangu photos of us.
A. Kishmish, were you smiling for your photo?
A. Papa, I was busy trying to explain a secret to Kaju my brother.

Usually these conversations would start with A. talking directly to Kaju and Kishmish, speaking through my abdominal wall the way people do with pregnant women. Often, however, they would continue long after I had left the room, with A. carrying on the conversation excitedly.

A.: Kaju-Kishmish we're going to take a long drive to Mulund today, so that we can eat a thaali.
A.: Papa, can we bring our friend Sitku?
A.: Who's that?
A.: He's our friend from Baby Colony. He doesn't have enough to eat, and he wants to have a thaali too.
A.: That's extremely generous Kaju-Kishmish. Very good.

And on and on. All the way to Mulund, on our walks at the seaface, over dinner at Dosa Diner, A. would discuss all kinds of things with Kaju-Kishmish--their former lives as twin drug-enforcement sniffer dogs in Punjab, their experiences with the doctors I saw way too often, and their lives in Baby Colony. I don't know where A. got the idea for Baby Colony, but it became a real thing.

And just to be clear: this was no longer about bonding with the babies-to-be. At some point it became an alternate, bizarre reality for my husband, a way to avoid remembering that these babies were in fact extremely small and helpless beings. Finally, with the birth of the babies, Baby Colony went away.

Yesterday, during our morning household "rush" -- a rush that is totally contrived because, let's face it, the only one with anywhere to be is my husband, and even he isn't so great at getting there on time -- A. was distraught about the Pluto situation, which was covered extensively in the morning paper. "Isn't it kind of sad, you know, about Pluto?" he asked me, as though Pluto was a kid who had been caught cheating, or a guy with 2 kids who had just been fired.

"Yeah, it is kind of sad," I agreed, and suggested that he read this article.

"Mimi," my husband said after a pause, "Do you think Baby Colony is on Pluto?"