The other day Alex stayed with the cutie-pie while I ran to the laundry-mat and did the laundry (don't worry, this is not a usual occurance, normally we let the laundry pile up so high and then shove as much of it as we can into the laundry bag and drop it off at the laundry-mat). Anyway, it was awesome! I jay-walked like crazy. Every chance I had, I eschewed crosswalks and ducked confidently between parked cars. I stepped, nonchalantly, infront of oncoming cars (ok, they were pretty much stopped, but still...) like I used to before I was pregnant and had a baby and had to worry about preserving both our lives.
Which leads to this next little bit I was going to mention: When I do step out with out the baby, in addition to jay-walking like I just don't care, I feel extremely and unnaturally light, as if I might just float up into the atmosphere, an astronaut, untethered from the space shuttle. Or like, maybe I am forgetting something. This is of course because I have grown accustomed to the extra weight and the awkwardness of all the baby gear.
Through painful trial and error, I have figured out how to get baby + groceries + car seat/stroller up our front stoop, propping doors open with spare limbs, without leaving baby and or groceries vulnerable. After much bruising, I can now prop doors open with one foot, while pushing the stroller through in one swift motion. Still, there are some places I just won't go, like the Champion Cafe on Manhattan Ave. It's a great place with a really cute garden but there is a huge (well, relatively) step up from the sidewalk into their establishment and then a long, narrow pathway to the counter. I'm just not sure I could handle the withering glare that the spectacle of me and my baby's clunky stroller would cause upon the faces of the preternaturally cool and collected, "freelance" generation Y-ers, updating their myspaces and facebooks on their microscopic laptops while very happily ignoring one another.
These days I feel safe in places with wide doors, level entry ways, lots of space and a good solid noise level. Places that are too quiet scare me and anywhere where there are more than two laptops in use is not my scene anymore (not that it ever really was).
The other thing I have noticed about baby gear is that most people don't offer to help you. I usually (but not always) refuse help anyway, but it's nice to at least get the offer. The best case scenario is when people don't offer and just jump right in and help me, thus circumventing my stubborn, New England, I-can-do-it-I-don't-need-your-help-thanks attitude, because, really, usually I do need your help, badly. I love these people. Normally they are other parents, even grandparents, who just jump in to hold a door or lift an end of the stroller without bothering to ask the obvious. Hipsters are totally useless, I'm not even sure I am visible to them, even if I was pinned in a doorway with the stoller upturned and the baby screaming. Of course, before I was pregnant and had H, I didn't see all the babies and parents in my neighborhood either, they were totally invisible, so I'm sure I failed to hold a door or two for a beleaguered parent/caregiver in my decade of self-absorption.
The justice, I suppose, is that those same hipsters and gen Yers who stroll by me now in skinny jeans, texting each other without a care in the world, while my gypsy baby stroller diaper bag caravan is stymied by a crack in the sidewalk will, someday, be knocking into things and people with their own strollers and a baby who was so happy a minute ago but is now screaming, while simultaneously feeling totally invisible to a good solid demographic of young people (to which they will realize, sadly, they no longer belong).
Sigh.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
word.
Post a Comment