The Double Stroller
A wet, muddy leash is twisted around my ankles, one arm wrenched behind my back, the other hand feverishly gripping the handle of a second leash. My armpits are ringed with sweat under my (apparently not) breathable raincoat and my feet are covered in grass and dirt inside beat-up Birkenstocks. I am the reluctant parent of two dogs and this is my first time walking them by myself. (Don’t worry, I’m not turning into someone who thinks her dogs are endlessly fascinating. Bear with me.)
I have put off walking the two of them by myself for fear of what it would be like: hard, stressful and probably a total failure. I’m worried the dogs will attack each other. Scared one of them will run away. Stressed I will take the puppy too far for his little legs. Mortified if someone sees me struggling that they will judge me. Also, in my rush out the door I forget to bring poop bags. What if I become that neighbor who doesn’t pick up her dogs’ crap?
The whole experience of manic dread and anticipatory humiliation feels vaguely familiar and then it hits me. It’s just like the first time I took my two older kids out in the double stroller when one was a newborn and one a toddler. When my first kid was an infant I would wait until he was deeply asleep in the stroller before I left the house because GOD FORBID he cried in Duane Reade. But with two kids on different nap schedules I couldn’t use that tactic. At some point, I would have to leave the house with at least one of them awake. I was petrified.
My second kid was hard to settle in his first months of life and rarely went long without a bout of crying. As someone who prides herself on being uber-competent, pushing a crying baby in public spelled utter mortification for me. My older one was mostly oblivious to the crying but sometimes got really upset if he heard his little brother wailing. I was exhausted from it all — the lack of sleep, the physical work of getting an infant to nap, the constant breastfeeding and the need to juggle the different demands of each child.
I finally screwed up the courage to take them out together in the double stroller, mostly because I had no choice. My older one needed to go to school and we needed food and diapers. Those were the days before Fresh Direct and Amazon. I actually had to go to the store.
In fairness, it wasn’t as bad as I feared and we got through those first terrifying trips intact. Sometimes the baby cried and sometimes he didn’t. Sometimes my oldest got upset and sometimes he was content holding his toy truck. Sometimes everything went smoothly and other times I’d forget the diaper bag and the baby would diarrhea up his back. At night I would worry about what errands I had to run the next day that might leave me marooned in public with unhappy children.
The honest truth is that the looming fear that I would make a fool of myself was moot. Everyone else I passed was also busy trying to get through their own day without falling apart. No one laughed at me or berated my parenting. People were mostly generous spirited or at least indifferent. My boys survived those early months under my worn-out eyes as I got by on a steady diet of Halloween candy and PB&J sandwiches. Little by little, it got easier. The baby got older. I got better at steering a double stroller. I gained some confidence with each passing day.
Mostly, it was the kindness of strangers that got me through those tricky moments. Cashiers would give my oldest a sticker and tell me about their own kids, now grown. Other moms on the playground didn’t mention my sweaty pits or filthy stroller covered in Pirates’ Booty. Retirees held the door open for me at the post office so I could push my double stroller through. Baristas at Starbucks would put the straw in my older son’s beloved Horizon Organic Vanilla Milk as I rocked the screaming baby.
My wonderful friends, who kept me afloat in those early days of parenting, will probably write to me and say “You seemed so together. I never knew you were worrying about that stuff.” I never told anyone that when out with my double stroller I feared the entrance to every single store.
We just never know what worries are beneath the surface for anyone else and we cannot judge. So the best way forward is generosity of spirit— engaging a small child of an exhausted mom while she checks out at the store, holding the door open so a parent can push the stroller through, looking the other way when the baby cries. Those tiny moments of kindness were a life raft for me when I was at sea. And now that I am no longer in those days as a parent, I try to return the favor.
The early days of daily mess and tiny victories as a mom taught me something that I have relearned time and again: everyone, on any given day, is just trying to get through their version of pushing their kids in a double stroller for the very first time.