Crummy Baby
written by: Emee Ring
My son was born old and cantankerous. I suppose there are babies with similar wrinkled and scowling faces, who spend much of their first weeks crying and flailing about, but he was different. Many tests revealed that he was healthy but he would not be comforted and I grew to understand it was a personality clash, that his being born, here in this time and space, was not what he had planned. His birth was a defeat of sorts, a game he had lost, while my husband and I thought it was a long-shot bet we had won.
I was sixty when he was born, and I believed it was my fault, my eggs so old and his father’s sperm even older, and that our poor mix of seed and fertilizer produced a crummy baby.
His limbs looked gnarled, like an old tree, but the doctors said he would grow out of it. He did not sleep. He ate reluctantly, accepting food only after exhausting hours in which we offered formulas of different temperatures and flavors along with combinations of various baby foods. Yet he grew and he pooped and peed constantly. Changing him and feeding him was how I spent my days.
I had retired before he was born and my husband, seeing the work a baby took, retired a few months after. I created an on/off schedule so one of us could rest while the other gave CB attention. We began to call him CB as a nickname, never explaining to our friends what it meant. When pressed, I said, “He is fascinated with radios.”
In his second year, CB demonstrated his displeasure by eating cigarettes, breaking glasses and plates, and throwing up over our dinners. Not once in awhile, every day. We hired a nanny who quit in exhaustion within a week. The next nanny did the same. “There’s something wrong with him,” the first nanny exclaimed before she left. “He seems determined to be unhappy.”
‘Oh good,’ I thought, it was not just me. She was right. CB did not laugh or smile or toddle around in my high heels. He frowned and cried and sat for long periods of time with his blanket over his head. I tried peek-a-boo and itsy bitsy spider and row-row-row-the-boat, but he did not play.
My friends, their children long grown, gave me concerned looks. “Has he been tested?”
“Yes, of course. They think he may be developmentally delayed, but nothing too concerning.” But I knew he was not delayed. I sensed this even without older children to compare him to.
“YOU try to engage him,” I implored my friend.
She picked him up and held him on her lap.
“Hello CB. You are one cute baby, aren’t you!”
He opened his mouth and howled, not stopping until she left.
She had been kind. He was not a cute baby, not even to me. He still had that look of a crabby old man when you walked across his lawn, a look like you were cat poop.
As children grow, they become pure muscle, hard to contain when they twist and turn in your arms. “Hold still!” I yelled at three-and-a-half year old CB as I tried to pull a shirt over his head.
“You hold still,” he replied quite calmly.
I froze. What was this? He’d been babbling for a year, but a full sentence in the form of a reprimand? “You can talk!” I pulled him toward me, meaning to give him a hug of congratulations, relieved he was not delayed.
“Whoa, Mama!” He pushed me back with his strong little arms.
“I just wanna give you a hug.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “I’m gonna tell you something. It took awhile to master the language, but I think I’m getting it.”
I stared at him. I was his mother. What was he?
“Don’t get weepy Mama. I just need to grow a little and then my plan is to get outta here. It’s not about you and Dad, you guys are great. It’s me. I’ve already lived my 1000 lives and I was supposed to be done. I wanna be done.”
My hunch had been correct. He did not want to be here. “What do you mean you’ve lived your 1000 lives? Do you remember them?”
“Said too much, Mama.” He tried to pull his shirt on himself.
I helped him get his arms into the right holes. “I want to know. I believe in past lives.”
“All I can say is that you aren’t even close.”
It hurt. I felt he was insulting me. But I did not know if not being close was a good thing or a bad thing. I blurted, “You are a crummy baby!” I didn’t mean to say it.
“Well, here we are. Let’s make the best of it.”
“That would be nice,” I said, meaning it.
At age 15 he sat me down. He was still crummy, doing basically whatever he wanted, biding his time until he could leave. But he grew on me. He was my son and I loved him. He and his dad got along well.
“I’m going now,” he said.
I cried, wanting to shout, “Good riddance! You were never what we wanted!” But instead I said, “I will miss you. Thank you for your time here.”
He flipped me the peace sign and said, “It’s been real, Mama.”
We never saw him again.
- Cat Woman - October 31, 2025
- Crummy Baby - July 12, 2025
