Been there, done that
One of the biggest disappointments of early pandemic life was the end of library baby time. There was the week or whatever when we didn’t go because it seemed like a bad idea what with this novel coronavirus, but then the whole thing shut down. In Toronto at least, libraries themselves have only sporadically existed as spaces you can actually enter. The idea that a bunch of people would bring their babies indoors to sing songs and drool on communal toys seemed unthinkable.
Well. The library baby times are back! Some branches have reinstated them. Not mine. (I am compulsively checking the library website like I used to check for vaccine appointments.) But my old branch, yes. This was somehow… I don’t want to say better, because obviously being able to walk somewhere is better, with a stroller, than needing two forms of public transit (and more on that in a moment). But wouldn’t it be fun to take baby 2 to the place where baby 1 learned rhymes and had milestones and such?
It began promsingly enough, apart from a slight diversion of the first public transit leg. We still got to Yorkville early, early enough that I could have a Vietnamese iced coffee and a vaguely Scandinavian cinnamon bun as second breakfast at AOK, the coffee shop in the Aritzia on Bloor. This was what I’d do before baby time in the before times and how bizarre to be doing it again. But how perfect. Nap was even lining up correctly!
Baby time itself was so wonderful. Such happy babies! All 4 of them, as versus the 30 or whatever there used to be. The woman leading the program mentioned that it hadn’t happened since March 2020 and I was like, yup. Enough time to be back with an entirely different baby. All the adults were masked (possibly specific to that branch), but the babies got to play with the bead toys and hold hands and generally be babies together which is really the point.
It all got somewhat less idyllic on the way home. First there was an announcement that the subway, the one I had just swiped into and taken complicated and spaced-apart elevators to get to b/c stroller, was not running. Then, as I was about to leave the station, an announcement that never mind now it was. So I went back and got on the (crowded) train. We were on it for like a minute when I heard the sound of a man shouting AAAAAAHHHH in a way far more menacing than I can convey. I didn’t see the man, but did notice how everyone in the car was running panicked towards the part of the car I was in, away from the man, who was, I could infer, running screaming in our direction.
I was all jaded and blasé about this, what with my decades of subway-riding experience. Kidding! I was on the subway with an infant and someone dangerously unhinged. I screamed something about how I was there with MY BABY and a man near me said it would be OK, that everyone would look out for us and indeed everyone did sort of cluster more tightly around us, a human shield of sorts. This was thankfully not necessary as (most?) everyone got out at the next station. There were EMTs with a stretcher on the platform, as well as an ambulence and several police cars outside the station. This was apparently not eventful enough to make the roundup of recent subway disturbances. I am nevertheless… not keen?
Because I’m me, I spent like 823409983 hours and 5 terrifying minutes (but not terrifying because of Covid! Still in our 90 days immunity window!) getting home from this outing with a baby napping atop a decent quantity of Eataly groceries, a Sephora store-brand eyeliner, and an Olaplex conditioner, and right also a croissant from AOK because always important to get a to-go pastry as well, for spouse or for later. Fine so the mega-stroller had a bit of an adventure, but it remains a very effective shopping cart.