I am telling you, they come out of the woodwork. Possibly even thin air, given that there has been no woodwork to speak of on the New York City subway system since approximately 1913. Really: I get within a step or two of a staircase, and suddenly there they are, my stroller-schlepping angels, saying, "Can I help you with that?" One was a dad who said he missed his own kids' halcyon days on wheels. Another, a teenager, wound through the station helping me up several flights even though his exit was in the opposite direction. "Sure, lady," he said when I gushed with gratitude. And it's not just men. The other day, thinking I was alone at the bottom of a flight of stairs, I turned the stroller around to begin the backwards/upwards hoist. Then I heard quick footsteps. A woman was coming at a dead run from the other end of the platform. "I help you," she panted. "I help you!" And help me she did.
Young, old, male, female, rush hour, calm, Manhattan, Brooklyn: my stroller sherpas are always there. In the seven months that I've been a subway-riding mother, I have carried Bess's stroller on the stairs by myself exactly once, when I really did happen to be alone. Knowing I can rely on this kindness of strangers — really, it makes me proud to be a New Yorker.
So, there are two things I want to say to these kind It's not manners. She is tired. She wants to sit. It is the law.folks:
1. Thank you very, very much.
2. Where the hell were you people when I was eight months pregnant?
Oh, right. You were sitting in your seats. While I stood. In August.
I remember clearly, even through the hot summer haze. I'd clump down the stairs on swollen feet, usually finding blessed rest on one of the benches on the platform. (They're often empty, as in New York, the system that tells you the train is coming is that you stand at the edge and look down the track.) When the train arrived, I — facing, mind you, a long ride to or from Brooklyn — would enter, ever hopeful . . . to a sea of blank stares, bald spots, Post headlines. Headlines held up to hide faces. Headlines reading, CHIVALRY DEAD. That's right: no one budged. Time and again. No. One. Budged.
At first, I'd ride standing, gripping the soon-sweaty pole in silent, martyred rage. Were these people raised in a barn? No, not even. Anyone raised in a barn would know that large pregnant animals demand deference. "Sure, Big Daisy, you go riiiiight ahead." So what the hell? A pregnant woman gets on, you give her your seat. It's not manners. It is not "demeaning" or some other "post-feminist" [sic] bullshit. She is tired. She feels like ass. She wants to sit. It is the law.
Now, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "They didn't offer you a seat because they were afraid to insult you, on the off-chance that you were not so much pregnant as fat." Sure. Of course. There is perhaps no more cringe-rific faux pas. I know people with wee natural pooches — people with nothing to be ashamed of — and yet whose souls have been slowly crushed, one blabbermouth "When are you due?" at a time. (Except for one friend's sixty-year-old mom who was thrilled, thrilled — never mind the misleading bulge — that she looked young enough to be pregnant.)
