Babies in Literature Series: Laurie Colwin's Family Happiness

Inspired by the quote from one of Laurie Colwin's short stories that Amy Shearn* posted on her blog, I borrowed her novels Family Happiness and Happy All the Time from the library. When I lamented that I couldn't find "Another Marvelous Thing," the short story itself, the lovely Kerry Clare emailed offering to send it to me, saying that the story is great  and also that "Laurie Colwin is unbelievably strange in a way I can't put my finger on." And that she was a wonderful writer. I agree wholeheartedly with Kerry -- Colwin's work, or at least these two novels, are strange, and they are very well-written. They reminded me of nothing so much as the work of the children's author Ellen Raskin ( The Westing Game), primarily because both authors are adept at zany characterization and have an eye for the telling, quirky detail. And both authors really seemed to capture the zeitgeist of the 70s.

Family Happiness is about Polly Solo-Miller Demarest, a member of an old, well-to-do Jewish family of lawyers and the happily married mother of two, who suddenly falls in love with a hermetic painter, to her own great surprise and dismay. Polly is her parents' perfect (and, until now, perfectly repressed) middle child, the only daughter. In this scene we meet her inhuman older brother, Paul, his new -- and newly pregnant -- wife Beate, a Swiss psychotherapist, and her childlike younger brother Henry, Jr, and his twin-like wife Andreya:

   At dinner Polly could hardly concentrate on the conversation, so anxious was she that everything go well, and so completely entranced by the thought of Paul in love. She could not imagine it, nor could she imagine Paul in bed, especially with Beate. Their mating, she imagined, might resemble the slow movement in one of those grave, serious modern ballets that take a Great Theme, such as The Freedom of the Individual, or Suppression of the Dissident Artist Behind the Iron Curtain, as their inspiration. Paul was neither a laugher, a grinner, nor even much of a smile. He was an occasional head-nodder -- this was as far as affirmation took him. Beate matched him in stately cheerlessness. They did not look joylesss -- Polly felt it was impossible to be totally joyless and wear such expensive clothes -- but they looked stern and separate from the feckless lot of mankind that wiggles, tells, jokes, and has fun. They were very much in the higher mind, Polly felt.

   [...] mostly the talk was about the baby, although Beate did not look five minutes pregnant. She was tall and flat and lean. Polly thought she had perhaps arranged to carry the baby outside her body.

    "We will have the child according to the most felicitous method," Beate said. ... her English was stiff but close to perfect. It was rather like listening to someone who had learned the language by reading The Origin of the Species. "This baby will be born in accordance with the methods of one of my former teachers, the great doctor Rudolph Ping. There will be soft music and muted lighting. There will be calm and lull. We would have this child at home but this is not possible, so I have found a young Swiss doctor who will conform to the method of Dr. Ping in a hospital. This young doctor will birth us."

   Polly looked at Paul. So he was having the baby, too.

   "And you'll be with Beate in the delivery room," said Polly.

   "Certainly," said Paul, as if attacked. "The birthed infant knows if the father has been there." The idea of the birth process and Beate did not jibe in Polly's mind. She looked so much more like someone who would be interested in having a baby in a test tube. But the idea of these two unsmiling, spotless people married and having a baby was preposterous anyway, so the rest, no matter how farfetched, followed.

   "We've remodeled the apartment," said Paul. "While I was in Paris, Beate oversaw the construction and we camped out at Beate's. We now have a proper nursery, painted the color recommended by Dr. Ping: peach, but on the pink end of peach. Dr. Ping feels that a peach color reassures the recently birthed infant."

   "I can't believe you're actually going to watch," said Henry, Jr. He and Andreya found the idea of birth disgusting. Sex was fun for children, but having babies was work for adults and of no interest to them at all. They did not connect the appearance of children with sex in any way.

This excerpt seemed apt this morning, after I received a chastening comment** to my post about the Orgasmic Birth video. Perhaps in twenty or thirty years, orgasmic birth will seem as ordinary as "calm and lull" and fathers in the delivery room do now. I'm not holding my breath, but you never know.

For more about Laurie Colwin, here is an nice remembrance by her friend, Jonathan Yardley.

*According to facebook, Amy Shearn just gave birth to her own baby. Congratulations, Amy! Here's hoping the experience was as pleasant as possible.

** The commenter was afraid I might throw out the DVD of this beautiful film before watching it. I don't actually own a copy but considered telling her I was planning on ordering every copy Amazon has in stock and then having a nice bonfire in my backyard. You know, to help get rid of all the snow left on the lawn. But I was afraid that might not elevate the discourse.

Comments

[Kerry]

Hmm. I've never given birth before, but I was really counting on an orgasmic one. Is that unrealistic?

[babelbabe]

Colwin's babies are all impossibly well-behaved and charming children. And I LOVE her books (A Big Storm Knocked It Over is good, but I think Goodbye Without Leaving is my favorite.) But her kids are way unrealistic. Or drugged.

I think you have her pegged perfectly; I never would have thought to equate her to Ellen Raskin, but comparing Colwin with The Tattooed Potato - perfection. You are brilliant.