Eulogy for our Stroller

Friday afternoon, someone stole our beloved stroller from in front of Maximo’s preschool. 

It really only hit me over the weekend how much that stroller has been through with us, and I honestly was sad and pretty upset to see it go. Usually I don’t get that mad because it’s material things, but this was a $250 UPPAbaby G-lite, so apparently someone knew that it was worth money. Lesson learned. I’ll be purchasing a lock today.

However, I bought this stroller when Max was about nine months old and I realized that I would not be able to carry him, a heavy stroller and a diaper bag up and down subway steps everyday. I also knew I needed something reliable and study – not a $20 cheapy that would just happen to fall a part as we were trying to get through Times Square. So, I did my research (back then, I was still a slightly uneducated new mom!), and decided to pick one up while we were in Brooklyn at a cute little store called Heights Kids. I looked it over, and painfully decided to go with the non-reclining option because it was just that much lighter. (I would come to find this to be a bad idea down the road!).

We have literally taken this UPPAbaby with us everywhere. Behind almost every single photo on my Instagram, every road trip, every Mommy Nearest article adventure, every 1-mile walk to school every morning, you would find this simple, yet critical piece of our lives. When I think where it’s been – all the way to Coney Island to Sesame Place to Philadelphia to Baltimore to Pittsburgh to Boston and Thomasland to the Bronx Zoo and Hudson Valley to the High Line to The New York Public Library to our favorite restaurant, Landmarc to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, to sigh, even over on the PATH to Jersey. It trucked us all the way to swim class once a week during the summer (a 2-hour commute for a 30 min class!).

It weathered winters and extreme snow, ice and salt. It’s seen better days with tons of apple juice, crossiant crumbs and dirt from the NY subway platforms.  But it was a little piece of our family, and now it’s gone. 

As I am preparing to take Max to school tomorrow, which we will now have to walk (which means, I may have to carry him), I am sad to no longer see it hanging on the stroller hook on our front door. All those days it was a pain to open the door and let people in because it was hanging, now is a constant reminder of the distant memories we have made in just the few short three years of Maximo’s life. 

It may seem petty, but it was a reminder to me of all the things we’ve done together – Max and I. How many memories we’ve made, how many miles and miles we’ve walked around this city instead of taken cabs or trains or buses, and all the adventures we’ve had. How many awful days I was near tears from trying to carry him as he slept up and down a crowded stairway as no one helps and I almost passed out from the summer heat. Or the time a man yelled at me for running into as it was thrown over my shoulder to hold Maximo’s hand as he rushed past me on a subway to beat us to the empty seat. Or how thankful I was to have it so he could relax after spending a day rushing around with me to work. 

Goodbye sweet stroller. You will be missed. Where ever you are now, I hope whoever took you and needed you more than us and you’re still happily strolling some young New Yorker throughout the city streets, and not tossed in some dark corner somewhere.