Stranger Care

I left Lyra with total strangers today. On purpose, too. I tried out a new gym...one with a nursery. It was a Healthworks, a highly rated, and highly priced women's gym in Cambridge. A friend joined me, and it was truly pleasant. It's a nice big gym with lots of daylight. The dressing room even has a big hot tub in it. It was all great except that moment as I walked away from Lyra in the arms of a stranger when, I admit, I really kind of wanted to throw up.

I worked out with the volume a bit lower than usual on my iPod as they call you over the intercom if your kid is freaking out or needs to be changed or anything. I thought about how it's the right time for Lyra to get to know certain people, like the ones who work at the nursery, because it's possible that in a couple of months she'll have separation anxiety. I thought about what a nice break in the day it was and how I might actually regain some stomach muscles and shed some more pounds. I thought about how this is something to do in the cold weather.

But when I walked down and checked on her before showering, she was sitting in the lap of the main nursery woman (a mother of 11 and grandmother of countless wee people) and I'd never seen her in a foreign context like that and I had the opposite of the throwing up feeling...I had this odd fleeting second of incredulous disconnect, like "hey, that little smiling baby there? I think, yeah, that's her, wow, that's actually MY KID!" It really made me feel weird.

I wish I could ask her how it went before deciding whether to sign up. Right now I belong to a gym that is just a couple blocks away so I can dash over there when glenn takes Lyra running. This one requires driving. The other drawback to this one is that the first thing you see up on exiting is a very good ice cream shop. . . .