LOS ANGELES—Coming, at last, to rest at his family’s cozy cabin in Big Bear, precious tot, Douglas Forrester was laid, still sitting in his car seat, upon a quilted-covered queen-sized bed on Thursday by a man who, as recently as the day prior, was behaving in a peculiar brotherly capacity. Only now he was looking upon him with a tear-stained face and calling him, ‘son’.
It was at that very moment that baby Forrester had a bowel movement, as he was feeling a little gassy throughout the day. He was about to fuss when quite suddenly the woman who had been calling herself, ‘mom’ since his birth blazed into the room frantic and wild-eyed. “Oh, good. breast milk!” he thought, “I am feeling a little hungry.” Douglas was about to coo in delight, but stopped short, however, when his mother started to talk to the man instead of undoing her blouse in preparation to nurse him. His stomach growled in protest.
“Ridge has staked his claim in my firstborn son, he just wants to push me away”, he heard his new father say to his mother, to which she replied that she and Ridge made the best decision for their family.
Baby Douglas wanted to interject and add that what was best for him right now would be his 2:30 p.m. feeding, but the best he could manage was to blow spit bubbles.
The conversation between the two adults seemed to forge mercilessly on. “You’re asking me to deny my son,” his father said. “I’m asking you to not claim him”, the baby heard his mother answer. Baby Douglas wondered why his mother didn’t realize that denying was the same thing as not claiming and if she had noticed the irony in denying him his basic right not to starve.
After what seemed like hours spent sitting in his car seat in a diaper filled with the waste from the day’s earlier meals, baby Douglas was at last released from his restraints and passed back and forth as his mother and father resolved how to ration their future time with him.
