Life Behind the Fence

For months I have resisted the urge to take the baby outside and put him down on the ground. We live in an apartment complex with a gated, landscaped courtyard. Although it might seem secure behind the wrought-iron fence and locked gate, our grass and shrubs are maintained by a company that uses herbicides, fungicides, fertilizers, and god knows what else. Like all babies his age, my son is orally fixated and puts everything in his mouth. And, like all first-time parents, we err towards the overprotectiveness.

So here he is, ten months old, understanding words, producing sounds—and occasionally even producing sounds that resemble words. He enjoys pulling objects off tables, digging his hands into his lunch, chewing books, flinging cloth around, gnawing power cords, and generally experiencing the world in a very intimate way. But the world he knows is a limited one. It is the world of our apartment, of wooden floors and wool rugs, window-shades and mirrors, a place where there are no animals, and the only soil is in the houseplants that live just beyond his reach.

To me this seems impoverished.

I grew up on a farm, where myriad life-forms—both wild and domestic—crossed my path, crept through the window screens, bit me, butted me, and soiled me. From an early age I knew more animals than people, and I understood them better than I did people. I ate a great deal of dirt, leaves, and worse. If the stories about me are true, by the time I was my son’s age, I had already thoughtfully examined, and then swallowed, at least one sheep dropping.

Good shit
Originally uploaded by baalands

But my life is not my son’s life. He is a city baby, and sequestration from nature is the reality of life in the city. Or it was until today, when I came across this article in the NY Times. Our obsession with cleanliness, it says, means autoimmune diseases are on the rise. Babies are supposed to put everything in their mouth as a means of priming their immune systems. (Of course, there’s no hard evidence for this—just the handwaving arguments of evolutionary biology). The article suggests that perhaps we should not keep our children so scrupulously clean. If you read through to the end, you’ll see that not only do some experts advocate letting children get dirty, and even letting them ingest some of that dirt, they also advocate allowing children to get worms—and not the friendly earthworm kind!

Soil bacteria I can handle. Even the odd fecal microbe, should it sneak its way in. But I have a visceral problem with the suggestion that my baby should have worms at some point, and that giving him dogs and cats as pets will facilitate that healthful infection. My disgust propelled us outside and into the dirt for the first time. With intentional parasite infection as the standard, the prospect of letting him crawl around in the dirt seem quite benign. I am not willing to expose him to a full range of beneficial filth, but perhaps I can manage a few dead leaves and bits of dirt. Just for today.

I set him on the ground. He looks up at me questioningly. Yes, sweetie, it’s OK.

He crawls off down the walkway, then veers over to touch the grass. Wet. Fragrant. Hmm, better to stay on the cement. Then along comes a flower bed full of anonymous winter foliage. He tugs on one particular plant for a while. Offers me some leaves.

After more crawling, he is dangerously close to some red rowan berries, so I pick him up and take him over to the fountain in the center of the lawn. It is surrounded by river rock. The baby picks one up, sucks on it, and put it back. He repeats the process, until the rock is well-covered in saliva. Nearby some moss needs to be poked. Numerous leaves are inserted into his mouth and maternally extracted.

As we explore, something inside somersaults with anxiety. Can the neighbors see me as I allow my son to stick fallen leaves in his mouth? Will my husband notice the dirt under his fingernails? Is everything covered with herbicide?

And yet we are doing something completely simple and lovely. The baby is exploring the world, neither overwhelmed nor jaded, just methodical, just investigating the merest fraction of what is, even in wintertime, a riot of soil, leaves, stems, berries, stones, and life. It is beautiful, it is normal—and it is also a bit sad. How could he have developed so much, learned so much, grown up as much as he had, and never smelled the earth before? Never crawled on the grass? Never eaten a stone?

baby in the grass
Originally uploaded by flyjawn