FORT GREENE
Defrosted by Friis in Fort Greene
E
arly Spring 2003. The twins are six weeks old and in constant need. Winter has been a blur¾days run together, nights are long, sleep erratic. I am frozen in a routine unrelenting, lonely, draining. Budding trees bring me outside. It takes one hour at least for us to leave the apartment¾a three-story walk-up on the edge of Fort Greene. One baby at a time is fed, burped, diapered, swaddled and strapped into a bassinet, then placed on the first landing. I carry the second one to the second landing, careful not to strain my decimated stomach muscles, then go back and retrieve the first, until we are all three on the ground floor. I wrestle open the double stroller¾a robust, graceless Graco¾snap in each bassinet-carrying baby, and try to navigate the heavy double doors, then the five steps to the street. If we make it out with neither one of us crying, it’s a miracle. But wait. Did I remember the snacks? Thankfully yes. This time. A block away is Underwood Park. Mostly I try to nap on a bench, away from the other mothers, who talk with condescending pleasure of their birthing experiences; all too eager to impart unsolicited advice on diaper rash, fussy eaters,
balding babies. Their disdain for my non-organic diapers, my ‘unnatural’ birth, my twelve weeks (only!) of breast-feeding, is easy to measure. I don’t know what to say to them. This day I try the swings. I push one baby, then the other one side by side until we are all in a soporific trance. A woman next to me, with close-cropped blonde hair, pushing a similar-sized baby, snaps me out of my stupor, when she frankly asks, “Are they twins?” I nod. She makes eye contact and smiles, “I feel for you,” she says. If I had not met you Marlene, in those first weeks, months and years, I am not sure what I would have done. From your first words to me I knew that at last someone understood just a little of what it was like to be a new mother. Perhaps it was our Europeanness that bonded us¾quick as we were to mock those American mothers, for which motherhood seemed to provide infinite gratification, or maybe it was just simply that we took solace is knowing we were both woefully ill-prepared for the harsh reality of being moms. That first year we met often in and around the parks in Fort Greene – Underwood, Camel, Purple, and of course Fort Greene Park. You introduced me to Kris and Sarah, with whom we set-up regular playdates, so that none of us felt isolated. You helped me remember that I was a person, not just a mother; that I had my own needs and desires, which were separate from Tessa and Oliver, and importantly, you helped me to laugh about the struggles we both endured. Because of that chance meeting in Underwood Park I finally felt normal. Thank you always Marlene! I have no photos of us at that time probably because I just wanted to get through it, but here are a couple during better times when the kids were older! – J A N I N E L AT H A M , B R O O K LY N , N Y
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