No one remembers much about my babyhood. So was I born this way?
An unexpected upshot of working from home has been reconnecting with my friends with babies. No longer separated by the tyranny of city-centre office buildings, I stroll with them at lunch around our local park, or meet for impromptu coffees on benches, taking turns to rock the buggy and wave a cuddly creature at the perfect infant boy inside. That is, before he screams at you murderously to stop.
You see, this friend’s baby is a spirited child; he likes what he likes and lobs what he doesn’t. His sense of humour is specific and consistent. He is not yet six months old but already a personality is showing, a character that seems ingrained.
Personality is learned, and behaviours are nurtured. I know this from years spent unpicking my own (books, therapy, and the nourishing power of wine, whining with best friends doing the same) in an attempt to edit out anxieties, and to put assertiveness in their place. But I can’t help but wonder if there is a small sliver of me that was born this way; fractions of myself that are impossible to fold away.
Related: I used to scorn spy movies. Now I think I could work for MI6
The problem is, I don’t know much about myself as a baby. Arriving more than a decade after my siblings, by then Mum had lost interest in the record-taking aspect of parenting. I’m told that I had a happy-go-lucky temperament (“Is this why I’m unassertive?” I wonder), that I liked making adults smile (“Was I born to worry about what others think?”), and that I was obsessed with meeting Barney the Dinosaur, even though he lived in the US (“I see that falling for emotionally unavailable men started young”).
Working out which parts of myself are innate won’t be so easy, and perhaps I will never know. But I’m learning, slowly, to make peace with my imperfections. If there is one thing we are all born with, it is surely those.
