Adventures in Urban Motherhood

The storm on Wednesday dumped a pile of variously frozen precipitation across the state. It also locked moms and babies -- especially those of us who have colds -- in our tiny apartments. Yesterday and today have provided urban moms with a miserable choice.

A. Stay inside.
B. Go outside.

It sounds pretty simple. Inside is warm and dry. Outside is... not. Outside is a dangerous topography of water in all its myriad forms: slush frozen into ankle-snapping corsucations, unexpected slicks of clear ice in the shade of trees, skims of water over gray packed snow, sloggy lakes made of a viscous semi-freddo of glacially cold ice melt, rainbow-colored car effluvia, and ice crystals. The sidewalks are trecherous for those of us carrying babies in a sling or bjorn, but impassible for those of us with strollers.

Of course, all moms were outside.

There's only so much time you can spend inside a small apartment, playing with books and blocks. You go stir crazy. The baby goes stir crazy. On day three or so, you abandon all your tightly held ideals and try to get the kid to watch TV -- it's called the electronic babysitter, after all -- but no, she's not interested in Good Eats or Simply Quilts. (The only things I had on TiVo that seemed even remotely appropriate for a baby. CSI and Gilmore Girls being out of the question, thanks to the terrible writing. Plus, House but... well, 25-foot tapeworm.)

On the positive side: Bostonians may have a reputation as cold and unfriendly, but lots would stop and help me lift the stroller over a particularly narsty snow berm. (In the bjorn/stroller debte, I decided that if I was going to slip and fall, I'd rather not land on May.)

On the negative side, Bostonians DON'T SHOVEL properly, if at all. One-shovel-width paths with lumpy ice on either side is not the way to make your sidewalk passable. And those nice little slopes down and up from the street -- yeah, those are where the plows dump their morraines of sand, slat, gravel, and icey snow. They are nigh impassible most of the time.

There's some profound thought, I'm sure, to be said that a mother locked alone with a baby is willing to brave such awfulness just to get out. But I can't think of anything. So I say good night.