  We have been strolling P around malls since she was about a week old, and it's always been on her terms. When she was very little, she was a fussbudget, so we couldn't even stop walking or she would start screaming, and she usually wanted to eat. I have told you before about her undiagnosed reflux disease and her endless colic and complaining, but at the time the only remedy for it was to feed her. Then I would try to find a discreet place, but invariably if you try this in public, however discreetly, either a gang of construction workers walks by the instant you commence, or if you're in your car, the people from the cars on either side of you return to their vehicles at that exact moment. I cared less and less about this as time went on. I have a particular recollection of going to the furthest corner of the Bloomingdale's furniture department and finding a nice chair to settle down into, when a saleslady approached and asked what I thought I was doing. "I'm feeding the baby," I said. I hadn't started yet, obviously. "A bottle?! " she demanded to know. "Uh . . .no. " "Well, there is a ladies room over behind the down comforters. You can feed the baby there.
" "Would you eat your lunch in a toilet? " I asked her. She went away, but we ended up at the car instead, P by now screaming, with the owners of the two cars on either side returning forthwith. I still feel sanctimonious in the mall when I see kids with their propped bottles of formula in their strollers while their moms shop. I may have spent half of those earlier mall visits in the Sears dressing room with P, but I know it was the better choice. But anyway, there we were in the mall, for better or for worse, while she was very little. As she grew older, she was in a stroller, and then later she was mobile and sassy and then later full of piss and vinegar and then later unable to even go to the mall, because she had such unbelievable tantrums. Just recently we have reinstituted the mall visit as a diversion, because, as P says, "I so bigger and taller!
I growed up! I a good listener to Mommy now. " So today we went and bought the following: 1. one pink stuffed frog named Lotus 2. two rides on the merry go round for P and S 3. two mini packets of candy corn for Justrose 4. two greeting cards for soldiers Ah, how visits to the mall have changed.
I remember the first time I went to this particular mall -- built on the site of the holiday amusement park where John Phillip Sousa used to play -- and I was about thirteen. That day, I bought a pair of BONGO jeans with a crazy hawaiian print acid washed into them. And a turquoise shirt. Leave me alone, okay -- it was the early eighties. I loved those jeans! I still remember them. Today, I saw many things I should like to have, provided I chance to trip over a sugar daddy in the street who takes a fancy to me. These things were: 1. A Juicy couture carpetbag in pink with graffiti on it.
2.
A pink sweater with a beautiful V neckline, in mohair, and a big sparkly pink jewel on the decollete 3. A really wild dress (handkerchief-hem) in rose covered with all kinds of beading and jewels: Isn't it gorgeous! I said to S. I'd love to have somewhere to wear it. He replied: If by gorgeous, you mean hideous, then .
.
.yes.
4.
A new pair of sneakers. 5. A three hundred fifty five dollar blue glass bowl on a ravishingly pink pedestal. 6. Expensive shampoo and conditioner. 7. Mrs Fields cookies. 8. A lifesize cutout of Orlando Bloom in his Legolas costume.
9. A mauve fedora with a cream satin band. 10.A pair of rose cotton Victoria's Secret pyjamas covered with pink dachshunds. 11.A set of pink sheets that looked like something from a bordello in India.
. .
.did I mention my favorite color is pink? Anyway, no sugar daddies were forthcoming so we left the mall and I tore into my candy corn. But I was glad to have had a good and quiet outing that made P so happy, and she clutched her new pink frog the whole way home. 
