Little Labors

Head shape

The puma was born with very little hair, giving all of us a clear view of the shape of her head. Or at least, giving a clear view of the shape of her head to anyone sensitive to head shape. What a beautifully shaped head she has! the baby’s grandmother said, and then said again, and then said even yet again. Yes, I would say, in response to each head-shape compliment. But I felt uneasy: I had no idea what she was talking about. I had no sense at all of the shape of the baby’s head. It seemed like a normal head. The baby’s grandmother would then again say, What a beautifully shaped head, and I would again say, Yes, and then I would look even again at the baby’s head — I would try to look dispassionately, in assessment — and would still not know what she was talking about. Yet the shape compliments kept coming in. One day, as if momentum had built up from the praise having been repeated so many times, it continued on into more detail: What a beautifully shaped head she has, it’s so lovely… it’s not at all like mine! And with that, the grandmother shook her own head slightly. I couldn’t perceive then, and still fail to perceive now, anything particularly distinguished or undistinguished or even distinguishable about either of the referenced head shapes, but I accepted and continue to accept that the baby’s grandmother must have been talking about something.

But what? I found myself relating this anecdote a number of times to a number of different people. I related the anecdote as if what interested me was the simple allegory of people noticing in babies whatever it is that preoccupies them about themselves. But that wasn’t my real motive behind sharing the anecdote. The reason I kept telling the anecdote was that I was hoping to learn something about head shape. I kept waiting for someone to say, oh, yes, I know what she is talking about, and then to tell me. But no one was telling me. Then one evening I found myself at a dinner with a former supermodel. (The supermodel was writing a novel, her second, which is perhaps why she was at a small dinner with writers.) The baby was also there at the dinner. The baby’s being there prompted the supermodel to say that she had never, never, never put her babies to sleep on their backs, that she knows that is what they do these days, but that she thinks it’s a terrible idea because, for one, they could choke — that was what she was told by doctors, when her babies were young — and two, because putting babies to sleep on their backs means they end up with flat-backed heads. The former supermodel said that she didn’t want to curse her babies with this problem, a problem that she herself had. A problem that she had long been embarrassed about, the weird flat-backed shape of her head. She demonstrated the back of her head. Which was, of course, like everything about her, beautiful. So I still didn’t understand. I continued and continue to put the baby to bed on her back, though now that she is old enough to turn over, she shapes her own destiny.