Living in crowded Manhattan, we jostle and bump in to one another all the time and so do we Manhattan parents jostle and bump in to versions of our past selves at the playground, on the sidewalk, the school steps, in diners…
On an usually low-key, unscheduled, brisk October day, I took my two girls up to a neighborhood park we used to frequent before weekends became a blur of team sports, birthday parties, and sleepovers. I pushed one child on the swings, more out of habit than necessity, and watched the other out of the corner of my eye run around like mad with her friend, though they knew well enough to check in with me every so often. The school lobby and the soccer field have replaced the playground as the thrumming center of my parenting social life, but no matter how many children one has, there is always that magic of the first child and the introduction to the culture or, in some zip codes of Manhattan and Brooklyn, the cult of parenthood. It was nice to be back.
I watched the klatches of younger parents with one child in a stroller meeting similarly startled-yet-eager looking couples. They were all obviously still in the “she-is-in-my-mommy-group-and-her-husband-has-to-be-your-new-best-friend” phase of parenting (It took everything in me not to cry out, “Be careful! Half of you will move to the suburbs in five years!”). One look at those pristine strollers with developmentally appropriate (aka sleep-distracting) toys took me right back to those early days: staring with love, wonder, and exhaustion in to the half-closed eyes of a drooling baby; breast milk everywhere, just everywhere; rapid friendships made sharing intimate birth story details while taking up an entire sidewalk pushing strollers side-by-side. Sleep-training, pacifier-weaning, starting solids, and motor milestones were discussed and debated with all the gravitas given to UN resolutions.
This summer, walking down city streets deserted by all children over the age of 5, I see the parents of toddlers retrieving kicked shoes and other detritus of those caveman years – limited verbal skills, unending demands, impossible cuteness. Sundresses that fit just fine during the first pregnancy warp around many second-trimester-with-second-baby bellies. The sippy cups have changed slightly but the Venti iced coffees clutched with desperation are familiar. Nursery school applications and potty-training loom on the horizon. I overhear familiar snippets of conversation: “So I told him I think we need to turn the dining room in to a third bedroom…” “She still won’t give up her morning nap but I need her on one nap before the 2s program starts…” I hear the familiar adorable swishing sound of diapers between the fat little legs of those who escape the confines of the stroller.
We pass my younger daughter’s nursery school often and she always screams out the name of the school with glee. I see parents and nannies coming out at a particular time and I know exactly which classroom their charges are in and the names of their teachers. That building felt my whole life for four years and then suddenly, it wasn’t.
All the phases of parenting seem to have the gravitational pull of a black hole when going through them and feel like a mere bump in the road when they finally pass. I remember being in a parenting class with my oldest daughter and feeling wounded by the eye rolls from the moms with older children. When in another parenting class as a second-time mom with mostly first-timers, I resolutely avoided the “been-there-done-that-get-over-it” attitude and tried desperately to only pass on advice if asked. I will admit to a lot of floor-staring and lip-biting.
Maybe if you have a larger family than I this parenting thing gets old hat and each stage is like riding a bike, but I always feel like I am driving a strange car through an ever-changing landscape without a GPS. Just when I think I have arrived at my destination I discover there is further to go in different road and weather conditions, and I still haven’t figured out how to turn the damn windshield wipers on.
Still, learning to expect the unexpected is helpful and though I no longer have babes-in-arms and I do have comrades-in-arms. There is a sense of going through the phases together and helping one another along the way, a bidirectional flow of information, love, and support when parenting older children. So when sniffing ripe underarms and stinky feet and longing for those baby fresh days, I also remember up-the-back poops that necessitated cutting the onesises off with a scissor. So far, this parenting gig is always getting a little worse and a lot better (Yes, mothers of teens, I can feel your eyes rolling from here!).
I must admit that I possess an almost dysfunctional wistfulness and often need a reality check. At the beach one weekend, my friends and I sat around discussing a father-daughter school camping trip from which one had just returned. “It was better in retrospect.” We all laughed and starting yelling out other thing that are better remembered than experienced. “Dating!” “College!” “Losing your virginity!” And then, as if Nora Ephron herself was writing the script from above, we all said: “Having a newborn!”
Some of this article was written on a plane wedged between my two seasoned travelers, both quietly snacking, playing Mindcraft or watching cartoons that are forbidden at home (well-played, Sponge Bob, well-played). Behind me a pair of parents, he with a fussing baby in the Bjorn and she with a screaming toddler on her lap, argue other whether the children in question need to eat or sleep (Both, you poor bastards, both!). I still miss those days but I sure don’t miss those moments. When my younger one says, “Why is that baby so loud?” I lovingly tell her: “It’s payback time for you, McScreamy.”
So when visited by ghosts of parenting past, I smile, I chuckle, and I wipe away a tear or seven because they are nearly all funny, friendly ghosts. I tell the moms with newborns that they look beautiful, I tell the parents of toddlers mid-tantrum that their kids are just adorable, and I tell the parents of early grade children that almost everyone learns to read eventually, because I remember it all and all-too-well. I am so thankful that even though my children change before my eyes, when it comes to parents and children, nothing changes.
Lani Serota is the mother of two young girls, besotted wife, sleep aficionado (both her own and that of children), and celebrity child name enthusiast who loves a good giggle. When she is not working at one of her three jobs, taking advantage of everything New York City has to offer, or procrastinating, she loves to write. Lani lives with her husband and two daughters on the Upper East Side.
