You are reading Letters from Hannah. If you like it and want more in your inbox, please subscribe.
I had everything planned for my Brooklyn birth: my team of two doulas, my playlist (courtesy of my husband), the raw seafood tower I would dig into after labor (extra oysters, please). Instead, a global pandemic came to New York City as my pregnancy neared its end. After my hospital made a (now reversed) rule that partners were not allowed to be there during birth, we packed a car full of my stuff and my future baby's stuff and headed to my parents' place in rural New Jersey.
In those early anxious weeks, the thing that kept me sane was my daily walks, which became my morning ritual. I'd call friends and listen to podcasts and stare at the sun's reflection on the Delaware River. Only a few days after a scary emergency c-section, very slowly at first, with a new baby strapped to me, I returned to those walks.
When Simone was a newborn, she’d often nap strapped to me in her carrier. If we couldn’t get her to sleep, a walk was the answer. In the very early days, I was too anxious to stray far from the house, so I’d go in little loops, never more than ten minutes away, then 20, lest we needed to rush back if Simone made an epic poop or something. I loved watching her eyes get heavy and close, her tiny eyelashes flutter against the tops of her tiny cheeks.
Some time around her four-month mark (maybe it was sooner?) she became sturdier and I became braver. We ventured farther. On one beautiful day, we even journeyed across the bridge over the river to Pennsylvania. We brought her a little white hat to shield her from the sun, but she became expert at taking it off immediately. She stopped dozing off during our strolls; she was much too excited to observe the world around her. These days, walking is really the only time she sits still, lounging back in her stroller and taking it all in.
My worst days this winter were when snow fell in buckets and we couldn’t go for our daily walk. Usually I’m all about a cozy snow day inside, but the pandemic is all cozy days inside, and I am so profoundly over it. The walls felt like they were closing in around us.
Now we're back in Brooklyn, and after stretches of impending doom and a winter that felt endless, things are starting to look hopeful. People are getting vaccinated, and our new president (still such an enormous relief) says we can all get the vaccine by May. I cried in relief during his speech last week.
Simone is almost one year old, and the best part of my day is slipping her into her stroller, putting on my mask, and heading into the buzz of the fresh air, a more-beautiful-than-ever city (although also more strewn with trash), the rhythm of my steps below me, and the sense of possibility I feel while I'm walking.
We head to meet a friend for a coffee in Park Slope, or to swing at the playground nearby, her new favorite activity. Sometimes we just go in a big loop around Prospect Park. Simone loves looking at the dogs passing by, the bigger kids, if we’re lucky the policewomen on horseback. Sometimes we stop and listen to music or grab something at the Grand Army Plaza farmer’s market. Every time, she takes off her shoes. I put them back on. She takes them off again. Rinse and repeat.
Soon she’ll be walking beside me, and one day she might want to do something besides walking with her mama. The days are long but the years are short. For now, we walk.