Bringing up baby

One of the main advantages of having a baby in the Czech lands when one of the partners is Czech is the extensive support networks of the extended family and the supportive state.

Immediately upon returning home from the hospital with our new baby, my mother-in-law, alias Babička, volunteered to move in with us and take care of the cooking, cleaning and child-rearing. Tempting as that was, we felt obliged to decline and offer weekend visits and babysitting on evenings as a suitable alternative.

But Babička has the spare keys, and she works nearby. This allows for ironing raids, when, in the space of a few hours, all the cloths and linens in the house are ironed; feeding frenzies, when baby bottles are cleaned, prepared and utilized; and special inspections, when the running of the household is subjected to critical analysis against the background of Czech tradition and custom.  

One issue of contention is about the baby and the bathwater. The American tradition is to fill the bath with water at body temperature and let the baby enjoy the water, swim, play with plastic ducks and so on, while being cleaned. In the Czech tradition, though, anything deeper than a couple of inches of water is a drowning hazard. So, the little baby sits in the shallow water, shivering from cold. This treatment should not just clean the baby but also build up resistance to the cold. Ice cubes in the bathtub are optional.    

Babička grew up in a village. In her childhood, she recalled, parents took a traditional approach to silencing inconsolable infants: feeding them with sweet soup made of poppy seeds after which they went to sleep. I guess that, after freezing the babies, drugging them is the next logical step.

My sister-in-law, alias the Oracle, inspected skinny, blue-eyed Sophia and predicted that she would be fat like a worm and have black eyes. A year later, though, Sophia is not skinny anymore; she still has her mother's blue eyes and is becoming what Raymond Chandler would have called a mysterious blond.  

But the whole Czech nation, not just the extended family, operates like a think tank or a consultancy firm that works for free for a single client. Complete strangers can approach you on the street offering wisdom, predictions and the lessons of a lifetime. Some proceed to lift the baby without consulting the parents and proceed to hug, kiss and be tasted. The cheekiest came forward in a restaurant and, without exchanging a word with us, took the pacifier out of baby Sophia's mouth, saying, "Now, give us a smile!" Always eager to please, Sophia obliged, and was rewarded by the strangers' returning her pacifier and leaving the scene.  

A baby can come in handy in various social situations in Czech society. A baby is a natural queue buster. All you need to do is skip feeding the baby before you go shopping, or to the bank, or to any government office. In due course, the baby will let the world know she is hungry, and, like the Red Sea before Moses and the people of Israel, the queue will open up and let you pass.  Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the only place where this method did not work was the U.S. Embassy. You must take a number and wait. If the baby cries, there are excellent facilities for changing and breast feeding. Before us, there was a pensioner who overstayed his Czech visa by 12 years, and so was required to leave the country. He was considering moving to Malta, and wanted the hapless Czech consular employee to tell him about the cost of living and the availability of alcohol there. Eventually, after we managed to keep 2-week-old Sophia stationary and with open eyes for a second for her photo, she received a beautiful U.S. passport with tricolored drawings of U.S. landmarks, from Monument Valley to the Statue of Liberty.

A potential Czech citizen and a resident of the first district of Prague, Sophia was invited by the municipality of Prague 1 for a "Welcoming of Little Citizens" ceremony at the Old Town Hall on Old Town Square. This civil "welcoming" (vítání) ceremony was introduced, my wife Veronika told me, by the communists to replace the religious ceremonies for the newborn like baptism or christening. She reassured me no Czech in his right mind would come for such a ceremony. So, we went.  

It has been more than a few years since we were married in that same Old Town Hall, my first traumatic encounter with Czech bureaucracy; it was time to revisit in a more relaxed mood. Back then, we were pressed against the iron bars of bureaucratic logic. The registration office demanded foreigners present proof of their marital status and that they are allowed to be married according to the laws of their country. I presented a certificate that I was a bachelor. But the bureaucracy demanded a separate certificate that I was allowed to be married. I went back to the consulate and was informed there was no such separate document: If one is a bachelor or a widower or a divorcee, it means one can get married. As any textbook in logic affirms, "all bachelors are unmarried men" is an analytic truth, true by virtue of the meaning of the words. Well, this particular analytic truth does not hold universally, at least not in the Czech Republic.  

An even more severe problem resulted from the requirement to present my birth certificate with an officially certified Czech translation. Since my birth certificate is in the Hebrew language (I was born in Tel Aviv), the translation had to be certified by the official Czech state translator from Hebrew.   

"Where do I find this official translator from Hebrew?"

"Well," admitted the clerk, "there is no such person."  

"So perhaps I could become this official Hebrew-Czech translator?" I suggested.  

"You may qualify," came the answer, "but the official translator must be a Czech citizen."  

"How can I become a Czech citizen then?"  

"The easiest way is to marry a Czech citizen," the clerk tied the knot in the vicious circle.  

At the end, we had to appeal to the interior minister to receive an executive pardon for being a bachelor who may not be an unmarried man, and for not having the translation of my birth certificate approved by a nonexisting official translator.

More than a decade later, the officials at the Old Town Hall lost none of their authority and flexibility. There were five couples and babies, most of whom were the results of "mixed" marriages, like ours. At first, the officials separated the fathers from their families and sent them to the back of the room. The officials then ordered the mothers to march with their babies single file, as during the march of the guests during our marriage ceremony. Then, apprentice nurses took charge of the babies, while a Prague 1 official thanked the mothers for making a demographic contribution to the future of the Czech nation and of course presented them with flowers, an illustrated children book and 1,000 Kč in a savings account for the baby. Then, an elderly official presented a homily about the importance of educating our babies. During the homily, I was sitting at the back with the other fathers and chatted with another potential candidate for the position of official Czech state translator from Hebrew named Maimon. Sophia meanwhile was sitting on her mother's lap next to the other mothers and babies in the front. She was at the age when babies instinctively smile at any other face. So, she started smiling and giggling at the baby next to her, who responded in kind. Then, the little girls started kicking each other, as the official concluded welcoming them into Czech society.  

While I like to think of these early days of fatherhood in Prague in terms of paintings by Pierre Bonnard - private spaces, intimate realms, open windows, walks along the river and in the gardens - life for Sophia is a Kandinsky painting: strong basic colors, abstract shapes and strong expressions of emotion.  

Prague for us then is a Kandinsky inside a Bonnard against the background of a Baroque landscape in a fading Socialist Realist frame.

- The writer is the author of The Philosophy and Politics of Czech Dissidence: From Patočka to Havel and is completing a book titled The Legacies of Totalitarianism: A Political Theory of Post-Totalitarianism. He formerly taught at Palacký University in Olomouc and has held research fellowships at Central European University, Columbia University, New York University and Australian National University. He lives in Prague.

Aviezer Tucker can be reached at
features@praguepost.com