Is It True That You Can Never Go Home Again?

They say ”you can never go home again,” but is it true? Doesn’t  the word "home" imply that you can return, that you will always be welcome unconditionally, and regardless of anything?

 I was reminded of the more metaphorical meanings of this saying  this week while staying in the US with my daughter, her  husband and their new daughter-- my first granddaughter. We were discussing some  practices from the time when my daughters were babies, about  thirty years ago, in the US.

My daughter listened patiently to me and then told me, with a half embarrassed smile, that those practices were no longer used. Nowadays new regulations indicate that the baby should not sleep on her stomach without supervision, that she should not  drink water (but that has been true for years). There are also strict regulations about furniture which mean that she can no longer sleep in the family crib or in the cradle, built thirty years ago by a loving uncle. These are only few examples from a long list of practices and objects which could no longer be used. .

My daughter, a responsible and sensible mother, only wants what is best for her baby. Still it made me sad that, due to safety reasons, my daughter and her daughter are  deprived of the connection with the family history: her baby will not sleep in the same cradle that her father had slept in.

The main reason for those strict regulations is to prevent, as much as possible, Sudden Infant Death. I still remember the horrible fear of SIDS  when my own daughters were babies. Then we were not aware that anything could be done about it. Nowadays,  thanks to the new regulations, this syndrome has almost been eradicated.

But then yesterday my daughter went through the baby’s clothes showing me what she had received from family members and friends. Some of the items looked old and used, still she wanted to keep them.  Moreover, my daughter tried to convince me to return new gifts of clothes claiming that she already had more than enough. I argued  that it was fun to dress a new baby with new clothes.

At first I didn’t see why she wanted to keep the old clothes, but later I understood. Wearing clothes that came from cousins and friends was a way to maintain the important connection with the past. The baby was surrounded with so much new and impersonal equipment, that my daughter preferred the meaningful clothes to those new ones which were still sterile.

Dressing the baby with hand-me-down clothes  from people that you care about, is an act of bonding, and it is a way to go home again. 

Besides, it promotes another important value, that of social and consumer responsibility. It is especially significant in a place like the US where consumers goods are so abundant and  inexpensive that it is too easy to buy everything new.

I can compare this type of responsibility to the growing movement toward adoption of rescue pets, why spend money on one pedigree dog when so many other need a home?

And speaking of home, later today I will fly back to Israel; my daughter, her American husband, half American daughter, and her Israeli dog will remain  in their home in the US.  Staying with  this young  family I had to expand the meaning of home with the help of another saying: “home is where your heart is.” Indeed part of mine will remain with them.

Are We Bad Parents If We Don’t buy Your Product? Intimidating Marketing Techniques VIEW

Shortly after our daughter was born we received an invitation to dinner and a seminar on baby safety. Since we were graduate students at the time and hardly ever went to restaurants, and the safety of our baby was a new concern, thus we gladly accepted. While the free dinner and the safety aspects of the evening were emphasized in the invitation, information about the sponsor of the seminar-- Babee Tenda,   a company which at that time sold its products only through those seminars, was scarce.

 The seminar was held at a local restaurant; after a perfunctory dinner we sat down to listen to the seminar. This turned out to be  a demonstration, more of a sale pitch,  promoting  a multi-purpose product named Babee Tenda. This invention was uniquely designed to fulfil all the needs of the growing baby all the while keeping him/her safe. No wonder that at the end of the evening we signed up to buy the miracle product.

The Babee Tenda product was expensive,  and as graduate students we really couldn’t afford it, so why did we commit ourselves to buy it?

The answer is simple: we were  young, inexperienced and away from our family back in Israel –in short,  an easy prey for an aggressive marketing ploy, which is what that seemingly innocuous experience actually was.

Sitting through the"seminar,”I became icreasingly uneasy, at the time I didn’t have a way to interpret it because I had never experienced such a talk before. Later on when my husband and I shared what we felt it transpired that we both attributed that unease to the fact that we had been unprepared to guarantee the safety of our baby and felt guilty about it.  Thus as the safety of our precious baby was our outmost consideration, and we had been negligent in securing it, suddenly money was no object.

We later realized that this unfamiliar feeling of growing unease was actually stress which we felt as a result of the pressure from the sale representative. The whole atmosphere was one of urgency, we were never left alone to compare our impressions and there was no time for us to discuss our decision.

Somehow not allowing us to make our mind together all the while pushing us to decide then and there distanced us from one another and ultimately weakened us. In that microcosm each one of us thought that the other really wanted the product and did not wish to be the one jeopardizing our  baby’s safety.

After we signed the papers we finally went home; it was a huge relief as though we were set free. When we got home we shared the experience with our friends who stayed with our baby.  They were older, wiser and had much more experience, but still we were not prepared for their reaction, they looked at each other and burst out laughing. They told us that they got all their baby furniture for a fraction of the price,  and all that equipment met safety regulations. "Maybe Baby Tenda is the best in the market" they said "but you guys drive a used Ford, surely your baby doesn’t need a new Cadillac.”

The following day we cancelled the purchase, we were relieved to see how easy it was, this too was a new experience for us.

From that day on the name Babee Tenda became in our family a keyword for intimidating marketing techniques. And one more thing, we never attended free dinner seminars and other promotions.