The gray car rushed northward on Arlington street toward the red light at Washington; the driver of the gray car poked its snout into the eastbound lane, looking to make a right turn on red. The woman driving the gray car snapped her head to the left, westward, looking for eastbound traffic and an opening to turn. She saw me: I was five feet into the eastbound crosswalk on the south side of Arlington. The woman made eye contact with me. Her eyes grew wide, and she mouthed “I’m sorry” through her closed window. Her car backed up, and when it had come to a halt behind the thick white line on the street, I pushed my granddaughter’s stroller across the street. As I neared the front of the gray car, the woman rolled down her window and called to me, “Tell the baby I’m sorry.” I leaned over the pram and told Myah; she did not respond.
When I take my walks through my micro-hood, my strong stride gobbles ground, pumping oxygen through my veins and into and out of my heart. When walking on the Pennsy Trail, I stay to the right — unless a bird calls me across the walk — and pause carefully at Arlington, looking for a hole in the traffic. I am as observant of the rules of the road as if I were driving, and generally unconcerned about the poor performance of the people with wheels. But when pramming Myah across streets, I become hyper-vigilant, acutely aware of my responsibility for the six-month-old’s health. And I growl and grumble at the shenanigans of those drivers who fail to maintain my standards of driving.
The Pennsy Trail crosses Ritter street at Bonna, and while driving south on Ritter one day, I casually noted a couple walking along the west side of the street. The woman was pushing a pram, her head turned to the man walking to her right. Without looking, the woman turned the pram smartly left when she reached Bonna street, and I stomped on the brakes, glad that I had paid attention to the passage of those three. That heart-stopping moment contributes to my sharpened vigilance when I am pramming with Myah. When I come to an intersection, I pause far back of the red stubbled strip of the curb cut-in. Myah is in the nose cone of our ship of exploration and I am hesitant to poke her pram into the intersecting streets.
On a recent day in my micro-hood, I prammed Myah to Coal Yard Coffee for my cup of “Black Magic” (or “Witches Brew”), then dropped in to see Ken Collier-Magar. Mardi was sitting at her computer, and she turned in wonder to see the man and the pram as we rolled into the office. I asked for him, and she told us that Ken was not in, so we asked her to tell him that CJ and Myah stopped by to say “hi” and we reversed the pram and exited. We rolled back east down Bonna, swung carefully north on Audubon and dropped off a load of newspapers at the recycling bin behind the Irvington branch of the library. Myah rode in silence, pink Bink a butterfly against her mouth, nodding sleepily, her unicorn hat flaps shielding her cheeks from the wind, her grandfather glaring at the cars on the streets beside her. I make murderous eye contact with drivers and insist that they proceed before I slide my precious cargo into the crosswalks.
When pushing a pram-full of grandbaby, one must always be wary of the possible problems.