Baby, Be Good Looking

By CALVIN TRILLIN

So far, I haven't got a call from Tony and Cherie Blair, parents of the first child born to a sitting British Prime Minister since 1849, so I can only assume that they're aware of what I've always said when I'm asked for advice on rearing a child: "Try to get one that doesn't spit up. Otherwise, you're on your own."

Even parents who tend to be more forthcoming with advice than I am probably wouldn't be able to offer experience relevant to the Blairs' situation. For instance, most parents are not hounded for pictures of their newborns, apparently the situation the Blairs find themselves in these days with the English tabloids. If I may be brutally honest for a moment--and I realize that I'm getting into a sensitive area here--I would like to say that the restraint of the press when it comes to running pictures of ordinary, non-Cabinet-level newborns is probably, in the long run, a good thing.

In general, I hasten to say, I'm a sucker for baby pictures. If I run into someone who has a small child and does not display pictures instantly, I immediately get suspicious. "Has the kid turned mean and ugly, or what?" I ask. Newborns, though, are quite a different matter. To put this as delicately as I can, newborn babies are not always beautiful.

Somehow, though, they seem so to their parents at the time. Fathers, I think, are particularly enthusiastic about showing newborn pictures, maybe because taking pictures is one of the few things fathers can do during the birth process that makes them feel even marginally useful. (When my daughters were born, I should say on my behalf, I also sang along with the Muzak in the labor room in what I thought was a rather entertaining manner and occasionally asked my wife to dance.) I suspect that it's quite common for a father to come across a picture of his newborn baby some months after the blessed event and feel appalled that he once shoved the bizarre image he sees before him into the face of everyone he met, like a voodoo sorcerer trying to startle someone with a particularly frightening piece of juju.

It's unusual for any family members to acknowledge that the new baby has no resemblance at all to Shirley Temple, and sometimes decades have to pass before that acknowledgment can be spoken out loud. When my grandfather was a very old man, he told me, apropos of nothing, about visiting the hospital when I was born: "I came home and told my wife, 'The baby is awful looking.' She said, 'He'll be o.k.' I said, 'No, he looks like a fish. It's a shame. Such nice people.'" At first, I thought "such nice people" was an oddly detached way of referring to his daughter and son-in-law, but then I realized that after getting that first traumatic glimpse of me, he must have felt the need to distance himself from a human couple that had produced a fish.

Fortunately, photographs show the Blair baby, Leo, to be what connoisseurs of newborn appearance might categorize as "surprisingly inoffensive." Not having to wait a few months for their baby to be adorable is, of course, a little bonus for the Blairs, and one I can identify with. By chance, both of my daughters were, as newborns, absolutely gorgeous.