How they do it in NYC

[TheMercenary]

July 8, 2007
The Park Slope Parent Trap
By SAMANTHA STOREY
WHEN people ask where I live, I tailor my answer to my audience. If someone with children is asking, I’ll answer, “Park Slope,” as if I had just won the lottery. If I’m talking to a childless friend who lives somewhere gritty — say, Bushwick — I’ll duck the question, or mumble that I live near Prospect Park.

Lovers and haters of Park Slope are as divided as the political left and right. Gawker, the media gossip site, often waxes sarcastic with derisive remarks about the stroller-riddled sidewalks and the “nanny police.”

So do Manhattanites, who roll their eyes at its mention, invariably asking how I cope with those “annoying parent types.” But for those who live here, their love for the neighborhood is like that of an infatuated teenager.

I moved here for the Sesame Street feel: the romantic brownstones with swarms of children playing on stoops, and Prospect Park, verdant and peaceful, just up the road. It’s a neighborhood where old ladies go to “the beauty parlor” and restaurants have outdoor seating like cafes on the Champs-Élysées.

It reminded me of villages in London, where I grew up, with its complement of shops, homes and other essential urban amenities, all within a stone’s throw of one another. And in terms of convenience, almost all of my friends live here or are a couple of subway stops away in Carroll Gardens, Clinton Hill, Prospect Heights and other brownstone Brooklyn neighborhoods.

The horror stories of the “stroller Nazis” and the “mommy mafia” hadn’t escaped me. But until recently, I didn’t have a child, so the world of families was peripheral. I kept childless-person hours, and from this perspective, Park Slope, in some ways, was comparable to Greenwich Village, with its low-rise town houses, leafy streets, cafes and delicatessens.

I would get home from work, perhaps picking up a meal of D’Vine Taste’s delicious stuffed cabbage (150 Seventh Avenue) along the way, and then maybe I’d meet a friend to see a movie at the Pavilion Park Slope (188 Prospect Park West).

Fifth Avenue in Park Slope feels like the East Village, but at half the price, with superb restaurants and funky boutiques. On the weekends, my husband and I would barhop from the Commonwealth (497 Fifth Avenue) to the Gate (321 Fifth Avenue) to Great Lakes (284 Fifth Avenue). We rarely felt the need to go into Manhattan.

And then I became pregnant.

Joining the scores of 30-something couples who seemingly move to Brooklyn to breed, I discovered a whole new dimension of Park Slope. With my son’s birth in January came three months of maternity leave, and I got to see the neighborhood on weekdays.

I wasn’t surprised by the gangs of mothers, but I was shocked by the sheer numbers — they were everywhere.

If the cafes, restaurants and coffee shops on Fifth and Seventh Avenues were one high school cafeteria, each mommy clique would have its own table. The cool moms spent time at the Tea Lounge (837 Union Street), the nerdy ones at Barnes & Noble (267 Seventh Avenue), and the cheerleader mothers — the ones who could still smile brightly with only two hours of sleep — were at the Connecticut Muffin (171 Seventh Avenue).

I wasn’t sure what kind of clique I’d find at Two Boots, a pizza place at 514 Second Street, when I went there one lunchtime in the throes of winter.

The restaurant is fairly big by Brooklyn standards, with room for about 30 tables or so. Seated in the middle were three mothers, nursing their babies. And even though there were just three of them, they managed to take up 29 of the surrounding tables, with their strollers, diaper bags, baby carriers and swaddling blankets.

I had stumbled upon an assembly of breasts, mine included, as I nursed my own baby. While I struggled to manipulate my son’s head to cover as much of my breast as possible, these women took their comfort with nakedness to a whole new height.

One woman had her shirt completely unbuttoned, her pretty pink, lacey maternity bra on display. Another had one breast lopped over the top of her tank top. The third had twins. She wasn’t wearing a shirt — or a bra for that matter — just a hoodie sweatshirt unzipped with a baby at each breast. She walked around the restaurant with them in her arms, her body swaying in a comforting dance.

If only I was a 14-year-old boy! I admired their lack of self-consciousness but had to admit I was uncomfortable — it was as if I had landed in a private living room, and it felt as if I were privy to their intimacy unbeknownst to them.

But open and comfortable breast-feeding is quintessential daytime Park Slope. Moms are just as relaxed nursing at the local pizza parlor as they are in each other’s homes.

A couple of weeks later, I was crossing the street. I had pulled my stroller up next to a mother who was carrying her child on her shoulders.

She said to her little girl in a singsong voice, “Look at the beautiful baby,” which her daughter echoed back to her as if they were singing a duet. I puffed up with pride while I crossed the street before the light changed — there were no cars coming.

Then the lady sang in a louder voice — to make sure I really heard her — “Look at the jaywalking mommy,” which her daughter also aped back.

I hated that my neighborhood was living up to its cliché of being chock-full of “annoying parenting types.”

Here I was, a parent in Park Slope, being judged by another parent. Frankly, many four-letter words shot to the tip of my tongue as I thought of several clever retorts. But I didn’t want to frighten her daughter, so, begrudgingly, I took the high road and said nothing.

The ethos of Park Slope motherhood is most succinctly displayed on Park Slope Parents (groups.yahoo.com/group/ParkSlopeParents), an online community message board.

It has lots of helpful advice and problem-solving discussions, but there are also some parents who think it abnormal if someone doesn’t donate their cord blood, nurse until kindergarten, give birth without drugs and hold a lifelong membership in La Leche League.

Last year, for instance, a woman posted a notice that she had found a “boy’s blue hat.” She was castigated because she had assumed the child’s sex from the hat’s color. Tens of parents responded to her note as if she had used an offensive racial slur. If I were to base my perception of the area solely on e-mail messages like these, it would be a formidable place.

Still, living here I do feel as if I won the lottery. Mostly, people are really friendly — the kind of friendliness you encounter only in a small country village, or in Australia. When I buy fish from the Ocean Fish Market (203 Seventh Avenue), the man behind the counter always asks after my mother, who has come to visit three times since the baby was born.

On a recent afternoon, while walking through the park, I didn’t think twice about stopping a mom to ask her about her baby carrier, which resembled a backpack. While I would never dare approach a mother on Park Avenue to do the same, she seemed really accessible.

My baby carrier is a $150 torture device. She was so helpful she practically gave me her carrier — with her baby in it — to try on.

We chatted for a few minutes about the adventures of motherhood. Her son was several months older than mine, and when I said goodbye, she knowingly told me: “They get to be so much more fun. Just you wait.”

I wanted to ask her for her number to hang out again, but I felt shy about it. But knowing Park Slope, I’ll probably see her again, and she’ll remember me.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/08/re...gewanted=print

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Um, not sure what the point of posting that was.