The Baby Shower Gift That Was Not for the Baby

Every gift at a baby shower is for the baby.

Which makes sense. The baby is coming. The baby needs things. There is a whole universe of things the baby needs and a registry that exists precisely so that people can contribute to that universe in an organized way.

I buy something off the registry every time. That is a separate thing. The registry exists for a reason and I respect it.

But one year I also brought a second thing. Not for the baby. For the parents.

My friends Nadia and Tom were having their first. They were excited and terrified in the particular way of first-time parents who are smart enough to know what they do not know yet. They had read things. They had opinions. They had a very organized nursery. They had also, in the previous three months, almost completely stopped talking about themselves as people with interests and preferences and inner lives. Every conversation was about the baby.

Which is normal. But I missed them.

I put together a small box. Inside was a restaurant gift card for a place they had always loved, with a note that said: for the first night you get a sitter. A paperback novel for Nadia, the exact kind she devoured before the pregnancy, nothing to do with parenting. A small bottle of the whiskey Tom had been slowly working through over the past year. And a card that said: you are about to become parents. You are also still exactly yourselves. We will be here for both parts.

Nadia cried. Tom looked at the whiskey for a moment and then quietly put it in his jacket pocket, which I understood completely.

At the shower, surrounded by onesies and tiny shoes, this small box was the only thing in the room that said: hey, we see the people who are about to become parents. Not just the parents. The people.

That is sometimes the most important thing to say.