It’s Raining…Babies

By Jennifer Savage, 7-26-07

Last week Seth and I were driving through downtown Portland, when cruising through the digital dial of real-city radio stations I came upon The Weather Girls. Their high-pitched hit took me back, the way only disco can, to college, to a bar called Pugs, to dancing until 3 a.m., to sorority rush.

Humidity is rising - Barometer’s getting low
According to all sources, the street’s the place to go
Cause tonight for the first time
Just about half-past ten
For the first time in history
It’s gonna start raining men.

I’m not sure what horrified Seth more, the fact that I knew all of the words to “It’s Raining Men,” that I was singing them a little too loudly or all the talk of sorority rush which I thought it was pretty ridiculous even in college, but I thought he was going to run us off the road just to put himself out of his misery. 

“Yeah, you’ve got to turn that,” he said reaching for the seek button.

I did but hummed that song for the rest of the day at the zoo as we strolled Eliza to see the turtles, the elephants, the penguins.

Since we’ve been back in Missoula I’ve been thinking about that song. At 21, wasn’t it raining men? Or, more accurately, wasn’t it raining boys on their way to being men? That was 10 years ago and there is serious conjecture about whether is was ever raining men in my life but that song takes me back to another time and that time couldn’t be farther from where I sit today happily taking fake nibbles from Eliza’s avocado and blueberry slimed fingers, listening to a CD of bear tales and plotting which swimming hole to visit when Seth gets off work.

These days, at 31 as the responsible mother of an almost one-year old, there’s a different kind of rain coming down in my life. The humidity is rising, the barometer’s getting low and everyone I know seems to be going into labor. My good friend Big Sis is right, all around us brand new babies are coming down like rain.

Could we have imagined this four years ago when we met on the river, Big Sis and I?  She was wearing a tiny bikini, so was I as we found ourselves sharing a tube on the Clark Fork Float. Neither of us was married, no one in our flotilla had babies. A few PBRs later we were friends.

This was way before she was Making It In Missoula and before I was Savagemama, before she sang at our wedding, before sweet Eliza covered her with a thin sheen of baby juice. Watching from across the table as they both ate with their hands that day I thought about how far we’d come from that deflating tube on the river. Could we have known then I would call her cell phone from Portland last week to get details about a mutual friend’s labor progress?

“Hey Jsav,” she said when she answered. “They are all doing fine. I’m taking them pizza and beer.”

“Tell them we love them and we’ll see them when we get back,” I said.

Not too long ago I ran into Big Sis on the street. Eliza was asleep in the stroller. We’d just walked from downtown to the grocery story and I had hamburger buns stuffed in the bottom of my Revolution Bob. Big Sis was standing outside her office building in a hot corduroy skirt, fashionable sunglasses and a figure hugging t-shirt.

“I went shopping at lunch for shoes, but didn’t have any luck,” she said.

I shuffled in my baggy Levi’s and spit-up stained T-shirt (by far my coolest outfit), and tried to cram the hamburger buns that had fallen out back under our stroller. I couldn’t remember the last time I went shopping for shoes. But as she talked I could taste for one brief second those days of lunchtime shopping and form fitting t-shirts.

Big Sis and I seem to live in separate worlds lately and perhaps it is raining men in hers but strangely we seem to be connecting on the flood of babies in our community. We’re both delivering meals, fielding cell phone calls and talking in pounds, ounces and inches. She lets my baby cover her in avocado and I listen to her talk about the single life in Missoula. I imagine neither of us envy the other but like to get a quick glimpse of the other’s life if only for the sake of nostalgia or what if.

I’m trying to stay afloat, along with many, many friends, in the fast river of parenthood. Big Sis isn’t drinking the water but she’s standing knee deep ready to throw us a line if we need her.