I expected to be the type of mother who would get sentimental about giving up baby items. I thought I'd find the dispersal of tiny clothes and infant toys to be poignant.
But as the younger of my two children outgrew the paraphernalia of infancy, I found simple relief and a sense of catharsis in shucking off the old and looking ahead to the new. Boxing up my maternity clothes meant no more morning sickness. Leaving the changing table at the swap shed reminded me that I was done with dirty diapers.
It wasn't until I thought about giving up my jog stroller that sentimentality struck.
Unlike nursing pads and teething rings, the jog stroller embodied all my favorite parts of raising young children. Long a recreational runner, I gave up running for the first time in my adult life when my first child was born. Due to a combination of doctor's orders and the obvious limitations that caring for a newborn put on my time and energy, running became something from my past.
And I never acknowledged how much I missed it until the Mother's Day eight months after my son Tim's birth, when my husband surprised me with a gift-wrapped box the size of our coffee table. A photo on the front of the box showed a cheerful, fit young woman dressed in workout wear and pushing her beaming tot down a sunlit street.
"I can go running - and care for the baby?" I marveled. It was as unimaginable a feat to me as living in two different time periods at once.
The jog stroller became the most indispensable tool in my parenting tool kit. My son loved being taken out for a run. Back then we lived in a suburban neighborhood with wide sidewalks and plenty of people out working in their yards on nice days, many of whom remembered seeing me run before the baby's arrival.
"You're back," they would say amicably. "I'm back," I'd reply with overwhelming relief.
There were so many ways in which I'd become unrecognizable to myself since the baby was born: the way I dressed, the books I read, the pediatrician appointments and playgroups with which I filled my day. But when I was out running, I briefly became the person I was before.
By the time Tim started kindergarten, our second child had just grown big enough to sit upright. With the jog stroller, I could walk Tim to school every day, rolling the baby along with us. (And, in the interest of full disclosure, I admit that I let Tim perch on the stroller's foot rest on the many days that he protested about the mile-long walk.)
Nonetheless, I'm not sorry my kids are now too big for the stroller. Tim, whom I first brought along on a 3-mile run when he was 8 months old, can now run a 3-miler alongside me. Holly, as an independent and determined kindergartner, would rather push a stroller than ride in one. But I held on to it because I wanted it to go to someone who would love it as much as I did.
And then my friend Marilyn mentioned that she had a new grandchild. Marilyn's son - father of the new baby - is a marathon runner, and I imagined with delight my stroller out training for the Boston Marathon.
But Marilyn had a better idea than passing it on to her son. Why not take the stroller for her own use? Her grandchild lives out of state, but whenever he visits, Marilyn can take him on long trail walks or neighborhood strolls in my old jogger.
It was a win-win solution. My stroller went to a good home, just as I'd hoped. Still, I was a little sad to see it go. It had once served as a bridge between my pre-baby and post-baby self. As any mother knows, that's a pretty hefty task for something as unassuming as a metal frame and nylon seat on three tires.
I was a runner long before I was a parent, and for a few postpartum months the two personae seemed irreconcilable. Seeing the stroller now reminds me of the elation I felt when I first saw a glimmer of possibility that the two women might in fact be the same person.
Nancy Shohet West lives in Carlisle. She can be reached at nancyswest@hughes.net.
