Birthin' no babies

So among the other weird creepy MAGAt things that Tubby47 has uncorked is something call "natalism"

Birthin' babies.

Apparently this came up back in March:

"The White House has been hearing out a chorus of ideas in recent weeks for persuading Americans to get married and have more children,” The New York Times reported on Monday. Proposals include baby bonuses for American mothers and a new affirmative-action program that would set aside almost a third of Fulbright scholarships for people who are married or have kids. Malcolm and Simone Collins, oft-profiled natalists hoping to seed the future with their elite genes, reportedly sent the White House a draft executive order establishing a “National Medal of Motherhood” for women with at least six children."

 "Medal of Motherhood"?

For fuck's sake, haven't we been here before...

And, anyway, it sounded better in the original...aw, fuckit, you know the rest.

Mind you, the obvious point here is not just "more kids" it's "more white kids" since MAGAts, duh. 

As I pointed out back in November of '24, the "problem" of an aging native population can be "solved" by immigration (or, conversely, that eliminating immigration usually results in an aging, shrinking population).

But for MAGAts that's a nonstarter. Hence the Mutterskreuz 2.0.

Anyway, this came to mind today because it's my daughter's birthday today. She's 19.

She's a terrific person, and I'm glad she's my daughter. I wouldn't trade our 17-and-a-half-years together for anything. 

But.

Here's the thing; she and her brother are, in economic terms, expensive luxuries.

Seriously. They've cost her mother and I...well, lots of money. And time. And emotional investment, general head- and heartaches...they're wonderful kids, I love them dearly, but...

If your "chorus of ideas...for persuading Americans to...have more children." were limited to trivial dumbshit like a measly $5K tax credit or similar gimmicks that range from useless to outright insulting?

You can fuck right off with that shit.

The death of the eleven-kid-family is baked into any industrialized society. Once childhood mortality drops to a statistical rounding error and mechanization makes homegrowing extra farm- or millhands superfluous?

People stop pushing out sprogs.

They're fucking hard work. Good work, if you and they are lucky. But decades of often-difficult, always-expensive, sometimes-heartbreaking labor whether you're lucky or not. Even one kid is work. Two is twice the work. Four? Six? Fuck me sideways, no! 

Early on my now-ex and I agreed; two, full stop. And, frankly, after losing Bryn Rose had Sheadon been a little girl? We might have stopped there. It's hard to express how difficult it was to roll the pregnancy dice again after Bryn. Terrifying. To do that four, six, eight more times?

You're out of your motherfucking mind.

And the MAGAt version is actually even worse:

"First of all, it’s telling that this administration will do anything other than what families really need. If the Trump administration was actually interested in supporting parents, they’d be pushing for paid parental leave, subsidized childcare, and an end to laws that make it deadly for people to give birth.

Actually, scratch that—because the administration’s “baby boom” push isn’t just about boosting the birthrate. It’s about reasserting a rigid, traditional vision of American family life: one where parents are straight, women are submissive, and the bro-natalists in charge get to pretend it’s all for the good of the nation."

Color me shocked, bro.

So, no. Nobody but the Quiverfull loons will sign up for this nonsense. Just like the other creepy, weird MAGATrump shit, it's just a clown car full of weirdos.

But whatever. Screw the MAGAts, it's her birthday, so...

Happy Birthday, kiddo. 

You kick ass.

Life in the Dream House

Things have been so busy I didn't even get a post up for my birthday back on the 4th of October.

Well, there you have it; 57 trips around the sun. No wonder I feel tired.

Other than the embarassing tiara the best moment of the day was the cake; my Bride gave me a classic every-verging-on-passe'-man's-dream-gift; a nubile blonde popping out of his birthday cake:

Mind you, she was legless and only 6 inches tall, but then I'm not exactly Cary Grant myself.

But I had it from my child that her plastic conical breasts tasted just like vanilla frosting.

Happy Birthday to me, then.

LVI

It's the sum
of the first six
triangular numbers,

some kind of
Stonehenge black magic,
being born in '56,
then turning it.

Somebody said,

"Watch your back,
both Abe and Adolf
were shot in the head
at fifty-six ―

both the good and bad
could be targeted."

My Alice was good,
leader of a certain world,
hers no less tragic,
dead at the same age.

But I should be okay ―

my name doesn't begin
with the pyramid A,

I'll avoid theaters,
packing,
and most of all,
politics.

~ Tess Kincaid

This year the lavish sun warmed me and the gentle wind fanned me and for just one afternoon banished the cold aches and stiffness that serve to remind me, like a blind slave standing behind me, that life is as fleeting as glory and that mine has more yesterdays than tomorrows.

But that is fitting, withal; we owe God and ourselves a death. The trick is in filling the time and space between our birth and that death with living.

I hope I have done that.

When I look back I have remorse but no regrets.

When I look forwards I have hope but no illusions.

If I can do anything to make it so I will leave my world better than I found it; from my works, from my words, in the lives of my children and those I have touched.

I have loved extraordinary women.

I have seen flares in the night over the Gulf of Fonseca, and held my living son in my hands still warm from his mother's womb.

I have drunk deeply of the kisses of dark passion, and watched the sun set behind the Sierra in blue and purple as rich as wine and peaceful as the descending night.

It has been a good half-century and six.

Birthday Girl

We don't really know what day you were born, and neither do you. Your mother left you outside a little rural filling station near the town of Dongguan some time in the spring of 2005 and the Chinese adoption official responsible for you probably assigned the "auspicious" day closest to what he assumed was your birth day as your "birthday". He didn't know you, and probably didn't much care; he was just doing his job.



And we didn't know you, either. We traveled across the Pacific in pursuit of another little girl, a girl who turned out to be damaged, too damaged to adopt. By the time we met you we were reeling from the heat and the distance and the emotional trainwreck of the preceding week. We barely had time to pick you up, bundle you and your little "Funky Dog" bottle and your tiny yellow plastic sandals onto an airplane, and ride the long way back home. We had no idea who you were, or who you'd be.

We had no idea whether you'd be serious or silly, giddy or glum, outgoing or introverted. Whether you'd like to run and play or sit and read. Whether you'd be gentle or rough-and-tumble. Whether you'd be an "easy" child to raise, or a struggle. Whether, like some people, you'd come with your own happiness inside, or whether you'd have a lifetime of struggling against woe.

So far I'd say we've been pretty damn lucky. The girl we got was the girl who loves Ponies and sewing and cartoons and loves to laugh and make silly jokes, who loves to cuddle and play and shines from the love and joy within like a warm window on a cold, dark night.

So even though this may not be exactly seven years from the day you took your first breath, it's close enough for us; we're lucky to have you, small one, lucky that we've had this time together, these five years and change, years of watching you grow in size and in knowledge and in heart. Answering every one of the hundreds of questions you ask every moment, hoping to help you to the young woman you're going to be.

Happy Birthday, then, sweetheart. No matter the how or when, this is your day, and ours to celebrate you.

I Knew A Woman

(By Theodore Roethke)

I knew a woman, lovely in her bones,
When small birds sighed, she would sigh back at them;
Ah, when she moved, she moved more ways than one:
The shapes a bright container can contain!
Of her choice virtues only gods should speak,
Or English poets who grew up on Greek
(I’d have them sing in chorus, cheek to cheek).

How well her wishes went! She stroked my chin,
She taught me Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand;
She taught me Touch, that undulant white skin;
I nibbled meekly from her proffered hand;
She was the sickle; I, poor I, the rake,
Coming behind her for her pretty sake
(But what prodigious mowing we did make).

Love likes a gander, and adores a goose:
Her full lips pursed, the errant note to seize;
She played it quick, she played it light and loose;
My eyes, they dazzled at her flowing knees;
Her several parts could keep a pure repose,
Or one hip quiver with a mobile nose
(She moved in circles, and those circles moved).

Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:
I’m martyr to a motion not my own;
What’s freedom for? To know eternity.
I swear she cast a shadow white as stone.
But who would count eternity in days?
These old bones live to learn her wanton ways:
(I measure time by how a body sways).

Forty-six years ago you parted company with your mother for the first time; today you are with her and parted from me, yet you will not be parted from me. You are my North, my South, my East and West, my working week and my Sunday rest, my noon, my midnight, my talk, my song.

I know our love will not last forever.

But I can hope that it will last as long as we live.

Happy Birthday, love.

Nine

...years ago my bride and I got our first mutual look at this little guy.

He came into the world with a shout and a pair of bright red testicles - which I am not ashamed to mention, since he takes great pride in that fact - and has proceeded to make a commotion and exhibit a periodic case of the red ass ever since.

We love the hell out of him when we're not aching to choke the life out of the little bugger. But sunshine or shadow, he is our mutual past, our present, and our direct link to the future.

Happy Birthday, son; you are my sunshine, my only sunshine. I hope we have many more, and always find ourselves wishing for another.

Anamchara, on her Birthday

As when a beauteous nymph decays,
We say she's past her dancing days;
So poets lose their feet by time,
And can no longer dance in rhyme.
Your annual bard had rather chose
To celebrate your birth in prose:
Yet merry folks, who want by chance
A pair to make a country dance,
Call the old housekeeper, and get her
To fill a place for want of better:
While Sheridan is off the hooks,
And friend Delany at his books,
That Stella may avoid disgrace,
Once more the Dean supplies their place.

Beauty and wit, too sad a truth!
Have always been confined to youth;
The god of wit and beauty's queen,
He twenty-one and she fifteen,
No poet ever sweetly sung,
Unless he were, like Phoebus, young;
Nor ever nymph inspired to rhyme,
Unless, like Venus, in her prime.
At fifty-six, if this be true,
Am I a poet fit for you?
Or, at the age of forty-three,
Are you a subject fit for me?
Adieu! bright wit, and radiant eyes!
You must be grave and I be wise.
Our fate in vain we would oppose:
But I'll be still your friend in prose:
Esteem and friendship to express,
Will not require poetic dress;
And if the Muse deny her aid
To have them sung, they may be said.

But, Stella, say, what evil tongue
Reports you are no longer young;
That Time sits with his scythe to mow
Where erst sat Cupid with his bow;
That half your locks are turn'd to gray?
I'll ne'er believe a word they say.
'Tis true, but let it not be known,
My eyes are somewhat dimmish grown;
For nature, always in the right,
To your decays adapts my sight;
And wrinkles undistinguished pass,
For I'm ashamed to use a glass:
And till I see them with these eyes,
Whoever says you have them, lies.

No length of time can make you quit
Honour and virtue, sense and wit;
Thus you may still be young to me,
While I can better hear than see.
O ne'er may Fortune show her spite,
To make me deaf, and mend my sight!

("Stella's Birthday 1724" by Jonathon Swift)

Birthday Girl

We don't know, and probably never will, whether this really was the day four years ago when a woman - whom we will also probably never know - went into labor, probably in a private home, probably somewhere near the city of Dongguan in Guangdong Province in the People's Republic of China.We don't know and probably never will know whether it was an easy labor or a difficult one, whether the woman was young, middle-aged, whether she was a sunny, cheerful sort of person, whether she went through the effort to see her child into the world with her friends and family about her or alone, prey to the fears that suffering unaided through such a great labor might be expected to summon from the lonely darkness.We do know that the baby girl she lifted in her arms had what in the bad old days would have been called the "cat's mouth"; a cleft lip and upper jaw.

We don't know if that was why this woman left the baby outside a filling station one morning several weeks later. We don't know if she was pressured to give the baby up by her family, boyfriend, or husband. We don't know if it was because the baby had difficulty nursing and was failing to thrive, and the worried mother had decided that those more powerful and wealthy than she could help the tiny girl in a way that she couldn't.We will never really know what the little girl's first year-and-a-half was like, in the "Social Welfare Institute" in Dongguan. We know that it couldn't have been much good for when we first met her that Friday evening two and a half years ago in the immense hotel on Shamian Dao she was a tiny, underweight, crewcut little thing; nonverbal, barely ambulatory and full of giardia.We'll probably never be able to know what she thought and felt that first long winter as we struggled to understand each other. We'll never know what she needed, or wanted, or the whys that started each tear that fell.

There's so much that we'll never know.But we know that it has been a very long way for such a small girl to run in four short years of life.

You've grown so big, and stretched so far. Those slender little legs you barely used now carry you so quickly that your mother and I can barely keep up with you. Climbing high, singing, dancing, telling stories to the accompanyment of your own giggles...you've become a very, very Big Girl.So in that time you've done what we all have to do at some time; you've taken hold of the day that someone else gave to you and made it your own. You're becoming the child, who will be the adolescent and, eventually, the woman you choose to be; smart girl, sweet girl, happy girl, stubborn girl, silly girl, loved and loving girl, funny girl, serious girl, growing girl, daddy's girl...
Birthday Girl.

Happy Birthday to...

...you know who you are. Put some makeup on and take your manly men, big and little, and celebrate.You totally kick ass, and always will.

To My Wyfe, It Being Her Birth Daye

FOR every hour that thou wilt spare me now,
I will allow,
Usurious god of love, twenty to thee,
When with my brown my gray hairs equal be.
Till then, Love, let my body range, and let
Me travel, sojourn, snatch, plot, have, forget,
Resume my last year's relict ; think that yet
We'd never met.Let me think any rival's letter mine,
And at next nine
Keep midnight's promise ; mistake by the way
The maid, and tell the lady of that delay ;
Only let me love none ; no, not the sport
From country grass to confitures of court,
Or city's quelque-choses; let not report
My mind transport.This bargain's good ; if when I'm old, I be
Inflamed by thee,
If thine own honour, or my shame and pain,
Thou covet most, at that age thou shalt gain.
Do thy will then ; then subject and degree
And fruit of love, Love, I submit to thee.
Spare me till then ; I'll bear it, though she be
One that love me.

(John Donne)

Happy Birthday, love. Da mi basia mille...

Atomic Age

No, not this one.

Or this one.

This one.

Happy Birthday to you.