Stroller Lady, Wednesday Morning

This morning, I made three deposits at the Sinking Spring Presbyterian Church preschool. The first was Lea, three-and-a-half years old, who dashed up the stairs to the big-kid class, solo, when given the choice to do that or come along while I made the second: Susanna, the baby, sixteen months. Her first day in the infant-and-toddler room, where she will spend three hours with her peers and the phenomenal Miss Glenda.

It felt strange to leave my youngest for the first time, even smiling and entranced, as she was. And naturally, I know I'm not the first person to turn from that Dutch door with a lump in my throat; it's not even the first time I've done it myself, in fact. But now, on my couch with coffee and my computer, I have no mixed feelings about having sent my little buddy out into that one small bit of the world to give myself a break a day or two each week. This part is welcome, and feels right.

The third deposit is the one that left me reeling. I tucked it behind a rack of choir robes in the church foyer and walked out the front door face-first, like a normal person, instead of pushing my butt against the door to prop it open while I wiggled out backwards. I walked out onto Main Street without a stroller.

How long have I been holding a pregnant belly, a sleeping newborn, a flirtatious toddler, or a huge double stroller in front of me like a shield? Has it been the entire time? I've been transporting a baby in one form or another since February of 2006-- essentially my entire adult life when you consider the aimless, clueless amble through days and weeks that characterized my immediate post-college years, years that skidded to a bewildering halt when I found out Lea was on her way and I'd better get my act together.

Since then, I've gone about the work of defining myself primarily through raising my children. Wait, no: entirely so. And I have come to life in ways I never could have anticipated, and I have loved the task set before me, and tackled it strategically like I tend to do with a task. The loving and the tackling have both been ferocious. My life's work has been my life's everything. I feel that I am thriving, I do. But the collateral damage is certainly there-- my ability to sleep, for one thing, and the never-quite-there career goals further derailed by that still-growing resume gap. But mostly this: when I have a child in my presence, in my arms, I have a purpose that is visible to anyone, and I feel like a complete person whose worth on this planet is plain to see. I am a mother. Just look. This child is my responsibility, and there is no questioning that I have a function.

We walk a lot, my girls and I. We parade around this town with that big blue stroller every chance we can get, partly because we all like being outdoors, and partly because my day goes better if at least part of it is spent with my children physically restrained (I'm serious about that). People wave to us, and smile enormously. There are certain ever-present characters that spend a lot of time outdoors in this town, among them the Humorless Bicyclist and the Very Fast Dog Walkers. I have a feeling that I am Stroller Lady to the people who pass us day after day when we walk to school. And Lea is Front Seat Blondie and Susanna is Back Seat Cherub. After dropping Lea off, Susanna moves up front, leading our ship back up and down hills, toward home.

But with Blondie and Cherub both at school now, and their stroller parked in the lobby-- who am I? I am just a woman walking down Main Street, alone, at 9:30 in the morning. I imagine that the people are wondering: what's her story? Is that Stroller Lady? Can't be.

I don't even know how to hold my body. I try to walk extremely upright, something that I never do when pushing the stroller, or ever, really. I remember my eighth-grade lacrosse teammates teasing me that when I walked through the halls I leaned so far forward and walked so purposefully, nose down, it looked like I was always about a half-step away from tipping over. I find myself thinking about this, there on Main Street, with no one to hold. They were right, too-- I notice my body tilting strangely forward in my every reflection in every storefront. You might assume that now, as in eighth grade, each of my steps is motivated by some purpose: then, to make it from gym to French in under three minutes, but now-- what?

I have things to do, certainly. I have bathrooms that haven't been cleaned this calendar year, and I do have a part-part-part-time job of sorts, to write one short weekly feature in our local paper. But I have nothing in particular to hurry for, and certainly no real function that would be visible to my neighbors. This, then, is what grips me as I walk. This is what makes me tug nervously at the hem of my t-shirt, feeling conspicuous, feeling like an alien in my own body. My body has been my children's for so long now, pregnant, nursing, or both for over four years. How can I stand alone? How do I reckon with a version of myself that is no longer wrapped, visibly, in the existence of my children?

Last summer, Brian and I were invited to a gathering to celebrate a local political victory at the home of the Very Famous Author that lives a few miles from here. My mom was in town, and more than happy to babysit, but I spent the whole day leading up to the party panicking at the prospect of meeting new people, impressive people, with no child present to shield me from the small talk, the sizing-up, the inevitable: "And what is it that you do?" Because with my babies near me, the answer is plain, the question goes unasked, and I feel whole, and I know that I radiate fulfillment. That night, I tiptoed around the perimeter of the patio more self-conscious than I had been since eighth-grade lacrosse. So unnerved by my empty hands, I held a dry cup for hours.

I am fulfilled by my children, and that will not change even as they, and I, gradually shed the physical links. But soon enough, I will never again be able to mark myself as Needed by holding them out in front of me. I have worn my children for protection, sometimes literally. This is something I will have to unlearn, I suppose.

I will walk back to the preschool upright, dig the stroller out from among the choir robes, and strap my children back in for the walk home. I will be Stroller Lady, and I will push us forward, Blondie, Cherub, and me-- toward home, yes, but also toward every successive little nugget of independence, for each of us. That is the task ahead of me-- not to discard this lovely, heavy cloak that I have knit them into, but to keep walking and allow it to unravel, stitch by painstaking stitch, the way I created it.