I stared at the two flights of Muni-station stairs in front of me in dismay. The elevator was out. My infant son wailed because I was taking too long. No one stopped to offer help. There were no strong, young men standing around, the kind that are used to being asked to do things like this. I could either turn around and go home (an option I seriously considered) or start climbing.
I slung the diaper bag around my shoulders. I lifted my son onto my hip with one hand and wrestled with collapsing the stroller with the other. No way was I going to set him down. He could stand but was still prone to dropping to his hands and knees and shoving his fingers into his mouth. The floor of a Muni station is no joke. I eventually folded the stroller so I could lift it with one hand and trudged up the stairs, hoping I wouldn’t lose my balance and send us all crashing to our deaths.
When raising a city kid, it helps to have a strong back and nerves of steel.
At the top, a man in a top hat half-blocked the exit with his shopping cart. I didn’t want to set up the stroller right there in the shadow of his cart, so, still carrying 50-plus pounds of baby and baby crap, I squeezed past. “Excuse me,” I said loudly, trying to nudge the cart out of my path in a way that didn’t seem antagonistic. Before having a kid, I would have wiggled by without making eye contact and been gone before he could have even turned around.
By the time my son was safely in the stroller again, sweat dripped down my back; my hair came loose; I felt filthy; and I was very, very close to tears.
Who cares about nightlife when you have to pay a babysitter $20 an hour to enjoy your $17 cocktail?
I never intended to raise a child here. I grew up in the middle of rural nowhere on a dead-end road. By the time I was three, my mom could chuck me out into the front yard to play by myself, watching from the kitchen window. My husband grew up in the kind of idyllic 1980s New Jersey suburbs where he could take off on his bike after breakfast, not to be seen again until dinner. And while we both counted down the minutes until we could leave for the big city, the charm wears off once you have a kid and have to wonder, “Human or dog?” as you weave your stroller around gross piles on the sidewalk. I had assumed that by now my husband and I would have decamped for greener pastures. Whether that would be the Bay Area suburbs or back in the Midwest, I have no idea. That part of the plan is still hazy.
I came here for the nightlife, but who cares about nightlife when you have to pay a babysitter $20 an hour to enjoy your $17 cocktail? I came here for the food, which I barely taste, as I’m trying to keep my son from throwing the $8 worth of fancy appetizer we put on his plate onto the floor. I came here to make more money, which is gone in a heartbeat.
All city parents can rattle off the benefits of living here — theaters, museums, diversity, science camps, restaurants, choices when it comes to schools and preschools. I decided the best course of action was to lean in to our city-kid life.
We went to Drag Queen Story Hour, which was standing room only. I squeezed in close enough for my son to kinda sorta see the pretty lady reading a book.
We went to a Mommy & Baby Yoga class. He liked the parts where I lifted him over my head, squealing loud enough to make another baby start crying (oops). He hated the rest, when I was not giving him 110 percent of my attention. I left feeling more tense than when I arrived, wondering how the other moms got their kids to stay so still. Probably by feeding them an all-organic vegan diet.
I brought him to an art museum. He spent half the time crying (while I rocked his stroller vigorously to try to calm him) and the other half sleeping (while I collapsed in front of a single painting, too tired to keep moving).
He’s been to toddler gymnastics, music classes, “messy” art classes and a STEM playroom with 20 kinds of building blocks. He’s eaten Korean BBQ, sushi and falafel, and loved them all.
And mostly, it’s fun. Really fun.
But each activity we did was leaving me either more broke or more exhausted than the day before.
At Ocean Beach I watched him lie back in the sand, running his fingers through it.
Then one day we visited the San Francisco Botanical Gardens, which is free for residents. In the rainforest section, the wind kicked up hard, rattling the leaves around us. My son let out one long “ahhh” and then was quiet for an entire minute. Afterward, he watched the ducks in the pond while I read an honest-to-goodness book.
The next week I rented a car and wrestled his car seat into it to drive us to San Bruno Mountain Park, just a 15-minute drive from our neighborhood. I had a carrier and was prepared to strap him to my back and show him the gorgeous views of the bay up the hiking trail. But he immediately found a pile of rocks to throw joyfully, so I immediately sat down on the grass and relaxed. Later we looked for lizards and birds and sticks.
At Ocean Beach I watched him lie back in the sand, running his fingers through it. I let him put his bare toes into the icy water until they turned red while we watched kite surfers set up their rigs.
San Francisco, it turns out, harbors all kinds of kid-friendly and totally free nature. Stow Lake, Glen Park Canyon, Ocean Beach, the Presidio: these became my new hangouts.
I researched kid-friendly wineries and wound up taking nature walks at Bartholomew Park Winery and Pichetti Ranch, then slugged back a few glasses of wine, which may be the absolute pinnacle of Bay Area parenting. While I drank, my son threw balls for friendly dogs or found dirt piles to roll in.
Raising a city kid will always involve more planning, more money and more Purell than if I had lived in the country. And while I’m sad I haven’t been to any buzzworthy restaurants in two years, I’m also amazed at the new things I’ve seen. I had never made it out to Strawberry Hill at Stow Lake before, dismissing the whole area as “for tourists.” When I finally took my son, we were both shocked to round a corner on the trail and discover Huntington Falls cascading into the lake. I lived here for 13 years before I found them, and when I did, I had the privilege of pausing to examine each and every crevice on the beautiful pathway at the bottom so that my toddler could gaze into the water with awe.
It’s incredible to realize that this city still holds nearly as many wonders for me as it does for him.
Hey! The Bold Italic recently launched a podcast, This Is Your Life in Silicon Valley. Check out the full season or listen to the episode below featuring Eileen Rinaldi, CEO and founder of Ritual Coffee. More coming soon, so stay tuned!
