baby showers

So I went to a baby shower yesterday.

This is a ritual in our culture. Generally, these affairs are all-female events. The women, the carriers of the mitochondrial DNA, the daughters of Eve, gather to shower one of their number with abundance for the new life to come.

It is a useful ritual. I had a couple myself.



Like all rituals, these have an expected format. First, the in-gathering: women from different areas of the chosen one's life gather, meet and mingle. Each brings a gift deposited on a table or in a corner designated to receive the offerings.

Games are announced: for each package of diapers, a woman receives a ticket for a drawing. A giant baby bottle is passed around filled with jelly beans; we are each to guess how many.

Finally, a diaper pin rests on each placemat. Each woman is to put on her diaper pin. Each is to listen to hear when any one says the four letter word: BABY. If you hear this word, you win the speaker's pin, and any other pins she has collected.

She who wears the most pins at the end wins.



Then there is food: line up for cut up veggies, chicken, macaroni and cheese, Swedish meatballs. Later, there is a cake in impossible pastel shades.

Winners are drawn for the diaper lottery. The winner is announced in the bean-counting. The diaper-pin wearing, non-BABY-saying winner is not announced yet: save this for the end, when all have had plenty of chances to say the WORD.

The pinnacle... or at least, the POINT of the ritual takes the longest. This is the unwrapping of, displaying of, and cooing over of each and every gift.

How many ways can you say cute or soft?

I understand the utility of the ritual. Still, I was struck by the materialism, the consumerism.

The lost opportunities. Here is a gathering of women, at a moment of power. Rather than recognizing and celebrating the awesome creative power that moves through us, we squeal and giggle and nibble and niggle.

The baby this shower welcomed is known to be a girl. Pink and lavender colors washed over and through the gifts.

There was no strength here -- and there should be.