Warm and rubbery.

By some small miracle, I find that it is 8:15 pm on December 23rd, and I have time to write. It’s Acey’s birthday. We had dinner (slow-cooked brisket in homemade barbecue sauce with roasted asparagus and brown rice), Acey’s first cake (Duncan Hines yellow, but with homemade whipped cream frosting), and presents. Our clockwork boy was in his crib and dreaming of sugarplums at 7:05 pm. I’m done my shopping – almost all online this year, for obvious reasons. I’m done wrapping. I made a dinner reservation for Saturday night when we have a babysitter. I have groceries here set to go for Acey’s little birthday party on Sunday. The place is clean. Even our laundry is done.

And I have time to write.

There’s snow on the ground here in New York. I’ve been chugging through it with Acey in his stroller for four days now. And man, is it cold.

I must admit, we city parents deal with babies-in-the-cold on a much more urgent level than our suburban counterparts. While I know nobody in Westchester is bringing their child to the car in a bathing suit, few babies out there spend more than a moment or so in this kind of frigid weather. House to car; car to store. Reverse.

With city babies, it’s different. They either must stay indoors, or their parents have to get them really freaking prepared.

Acey has never been homebound. My husband and I took him out to dinner on New Year’s Eve last year; he was eight days old. It was freezing. But we walked the several blocks to the restaurant and home and nobody was worse for the trip.

It was a little easier then. We could wrap him up in his jammies and a hat and a blanket. We’d tuck all the extremities into a carseat cover, and pop the weather wrap on the stroller to block the wind and away we’d go.

It’s different now.

Acey despises his coat. When I pull it off its hook, Acey’s reaction reminds me of when I used to go for my dog’s sweater when I was a child: he whimpers, shakes his head, and begins to crawl away in reverse.

Damn it.

The rodeo that is getting Acey into his coat is only part of the battle, though. He must be buckled into the stroller. Getting his stiff arms in through the straps is not unlike trying to fit a king-sized down comforter into a small washing machine: push, pull, push, pull…almost…push…CLICK. Done.

But wait, there’s more. Hat beneath the hood. Mittens on those itty-bitty hands: Do I bother to find the thumb? I know he’ll be happier...okay. Where’s your thumb? Is that your thumb? Did I just put your pointer finger in the thumb hole? Does it matter? Oh, well. Zip his bottom half into the Bundle Me blanket-sack that used to cover his whole newborn body.

His blue eyes will peer out at me in resigned submission. I know I should put the weather guard on his stroller to block the wind, but I haven’t done it yet this season unless there is actual precipitation.

What is this weather guard I keep mentioning? In the City, we need our strollers when it rains. Walks aren’t just for the hell of it.* Hence, we purchase the optional weather guard that resembles a huge piece of Saran Wrap that stretches over your baby carriage. You might think it looks dangerous. You might wonder if we want our babies to suffocate. It’s not and we don’t. It’s as necessary as the wipers on your car. And our babies don’t suffocate: they stay dry and warm.

But he hasn’t needed the weather guard yet. I press the inside of my wrist to his little nose whenever we get to where it is we’re going: he’s always warm. I find this sort of miraculous, given that my own nose is usually numb.

But my feet? My feet are warm.

Why?

Let’s go back in time.

It’s Christmas 1994. I am home from college for holidays for the first time. I dig into the presents under the tree. Typical Freshman-in-college stuff: some magnets for my mini-fridge, a men’s XL flannel from the Gap, maybe a Dave Matthews “Under The Table and Dreaming” CD. But there is also this huge box. My mom quivers with excitement when I go to unwrap it.

I open it to discover Wellington boots. They are green.

They are, to my 18 year old eyes, ridiculous.

My mom is crestfallen.

“But…you get so much snow in South Bend! It’s so cold there! These are so high and air-tight!”
“Mom. I can’t wear these. They are huge. And if I do wear them to walk to class, during the hour I spend inside the classroom, my feet will be swimming in sweat. There’s no ventilation!”

Besides. They were so awful. I wear a size 10. These boots looked like huge rubber torpedoes.

Naturally, my mom purchased them in a Vermont boutique from a man who showed her a photo of Princess Diana wearing them on a rainy English holiday. They were expensive and non-returnable.

I dragged them back to college, where my roommates nearly bust a gut laughing at them. They nicknamed them “the foot condoms.” I would put them on during all-nighters with my pajamas to get a laugh.

I have dragged these boots to eight different apartments since then. The only time I ever wore them seriously was when I would take the trash out in Chicago. They came in handy crossing the marshy ground beneath the L tracks.

And then something happened.

I moved to the West Village. My Wellington boots were on sale in the uber-trendy boutiques all around the meatpacking district surrounding my apartment.

I know you know I’m being serious, because chances are, you own a pair. You may, in fact, own a knock-off pair from J. Crew. Maybe you bought a real pair of Hunter Wellingtons, like mine, from Saks?

I had mine before you had yours.

And now I wear mine with a bit of an ironic smile. Not because I have always thought they were cool, but because I am, in fact, falling in with the crowds who love them, and I was not hipster enough to like them prior to their official coming-out.

But I’ll tell you what? My feet are warm.

Thanks, Mom.


*When Elle’s mom moved to Connecticut, one of her biggest adjustments was coping with the fact that walking the baby became recreational. She lamented going for a walk around the neighborhood with no destination in mind: “At least in the City, if I needed to get Elle out of the apartment, I’d go to the grocery store for one piece of fruit. Here I’m tooling around aimlessly.” I have no sympathy. She shouldn’t have moved to Connecticut.