The Calm Before the Storm

(Photo by Dawn Shurmaitis)

Bleary-eyed, I sit here (yet again) in the wee hours of the morning cradling my infant and his beloved bottle. Each day, Siraj wakes up playfully, kicking his legs, and babbling for sustenance. He is not a big crier but his alley-cat squeals tend to wake his big brother so I always race to pick him up. Something about my messy-hair-frantic-monster-arm-shut-eye-grunt-and-grab makes him giggle like a loon. And despite my need for just another hour (or so) of more sleep, today was no exception to our ridiculous routine.

I cherish these moments. I really do. Being the baby brother of a mischievous toddler doesn’t necessarily provide Siraj with many opportunities for solitude. It is a sacred time where I get to hold him and stroke his humble fluff of hair without screaming at someone to stop stabbing the furniture with a fork. Or without yelling how someone is running around with a pointy-edged eating utensil in the first place. Have I really become someone who openly frets about someone poking their eye out !?! But I digress...

This is the part of my day where I get to hear my own thoughts and give myself a temporary reprieve from household chores. Last night’s dishes wait to be placed in the dishwasher and the fresh pile of laundry lays unsorted and unfolded. It is the only brief time where I don’t feel guilty about ignoring them. I can watch the sunrise flooding the city with light. As the buildings begin to shimmer I see the Staten Island Ferry make commuting as seemingly glamorous as the cruise ships heading to Red Hook. The street carts begin to assemble along the sidewalks and a wave of yellow taxis splashes through the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel (I-478). The longer I linger, the brighter it gets, and the less hope there is of getting back into bed. Still, even without a warm caffeinated beverage, the morning has already been savored. Each day, exhaustion aside, I am reminded of how motherhood in the city has its charms.

To Park or Not to Park

For those who know me, you are all too-familiar with the long-winded tale of how a totaled car brought about my wedding in under 30 days. For those who don’t, nearly five years ago a perfect parking spot was discovered as being not-so-flawless after all.

First of all, I don’t drive. Despite my parent’s deep love and affection for cars, I never learned how and have sincere doubts that I ever will. So, when my husband (back then fiancé) wanted to leave his car in Manhattan, he was the one and only tasked with parking and re-parking (during late nights and early mornings) per the dictates of NYC street cleaning rules. He took particular pride in securing spots where cars could be left for days in a row. Much to his delight, he landed one on Riverside Drive that could keep the car up until the weekend. For the rest of the week, he slept in a bit later, and happily didn’t think once about his Mitsubishi Diamante.

Early that Saturday morning, we walked 4 blocks to the so-called perfect parking spot with our bags packed to spend the weekend in Long Island. But we couldn’t find the car. We laughed to think that we walked in the wrong direction and started to reconsider which coveted place we had actually left it. But my husband was absolutely certain it was “this exact spot” by “that very tree”. Was it towed? Was it stolen? We had no clue. We tried calling the police from the street but were told we couldn’t file a report for at least 4 hours to ensure that no one towed the car instead. We considered our weekend officially over and went back to my apartment to spend the next 240 minutes calling and re-calling each tow pound throughout Manhattan and the outer boroughs. We did our due diligence but no one had record of towing the car.

At this point, the police agree to meet us outside the apartment. They told us to hop in the back of their squad car so we could show them where we parked. As we drove past, the expressions on my neighbors’ faces were priceless. At this point, we were pretty irritated that the car was stolen. So you can imagine, we didn’t find it amusing when the police officer was laughing heartily as he stood where the car should have been. He eagerly waved my husband to join and almost tripped over as he remembered we couldn’t open the squad car doors ourselves. He came running, waving a note, and mumbling something about what are the odds. My husband examined the note which said, “Don’t worry, your car isn’t stolen. xxx-xxx-xxx” and shook his head. The phone number meant nothing to us. Who takes someone’s car and leaves behind a note with a number? What kind of sick joke is this? And this is where the police officer started in with another giggle fest. Noticing my husband’s seriousness, he quickly caught himself and choked out that the note contains the direct line to the local precinct.

Apparently a few nights back, an eager pre-teen and unlicensed driver had stolen her grandmother’s car, lost control, and created a domino crash of six cars on Riverside Drive. I don’t believe anyone was seriously hurt but our car was the end of the dominos and was totaled so badly – it would have been hazardous to leave it on the street. So in the haste to clean-up the aftermath someone left a note knowing that it might take days for the police to look up the car registration information and contact my husband.

It took us months to determine who is liable for the damage to our car. Obviously, we were parked legally and not at fault but the actual car that sandwiched ours was also parked (as were the cars who hit them). According to the police report, only 2 of the 6 cars actually had drivers behind the wheel. Throughout the liability squabbles, we became acclimated to the perks of not maintaining a car in NYC. So, when we received a generous insurance payment for our totaled car – it seemed odd to consider replacing it. Instead, we decided it was the perfect international honeymoon fund. We scrambled to arrange a wedding reception in NYC and a month-long itinerary of events in Egypt. Nearly five years and two kids later, we find ourselves aching for our own car.

To complete errands and momentarily taste a subway free life, we try to rent a car at least once a month. And even when we rent, my husband is willing to take LIRR to the closest Avis dealer in Long Island to avoid paying NYC or airport rates. This technique doesn’t usually bring us the newest or even cleanest models. However, today they gave my husband a 2010 Hyundai Genesis with less than 300 miles on it.

He called me on the way to pick me up just to say how great it drives and to ask if we have time to get it washed someplace nice before we go out. I reminded him that it is a rental and he retorts that this doesn’t absolve us of taking good care of it. I seriously don’t think I have ever heard him be this happily devoted and already know I have lost him to that V8 temptress. As he is already talking about extending the rental for a month, I know we are likely to head to the Hyundai dealership soon.

Let’s just hope he doesn’t expect me to learn to drive so I can park it.

Seriously, Another Mommy Blog !?!

Ok. Before you start yawning and fearing the onslaught of gratuitous baby photos… I vow to make this a critically minded and relevant forum for all visitors.

As a Columbia graduate student trying to complete my masters in Strategic Communications, I have been tasked with trying to find my place in the blogosphere for the next nine weeks. And as a mother of two, it seems nearly impossible not to take my toddler and infant with me.

I am full aware that a quick search for “mommy” on Technorati yields 1,903 related blogs out of 1,187,661. Normally, I don’t aim for being the 1,904th person to arrive at any scene. But as I talk to my family, friends, co-workers, and fellow students, I realize that beyond the selfish need to preserve my children’s milestones or capture my adventures in Manhattan – parenthood isn’t an individual’s journey. With each birth, a collective exchange begins where stories of wisdom (however loosely defined), mayhem, and mischief are traded, if for no other purpose than to have a lifeline back to sanity. Hopefully, with this blog I can continue being in love with New York City (and my children) while also avoiding having to be fit for my own straightjacket.

So please, join me on as I embark on this digital adventure. And who knows, maybe in a just few postings you will be begging me for those baby photos.