Bus rides and coffee and more.
It’s been an eventful two weeks. Dare I say I’ve finally made a (gulp!) friend?
This is the girl I met on the bus a few weeks back. There’s this policy on Dublin bus that only one upright buggy/stroller is allowed on the bus and any other poor unfortunate has to fold theirs up and haul the sleeping or wailing child (take your pick) out it they want to travel .
So there I was a few weeks ago, standing in the rain with a screaming Roz, waiting for the bus so we could to go to our breastfeeding support group. I’d already done about fifteen laps around the bus stop sign to try and calm the little monster that had invaded my usually peaceful bundle of joy’s body and was getting sympathetic looks from an elderly gentleman reading his newspaper.
The bus eventually came, and I dragged child and buggy on. To my surprise, there was already a buggy in the bus, but the bus driver hadn’t said anything, and the bus was already pulling away. This happens quite often on route 120. It runs through a very small community, so the bus drivers get to know the people and kind of let us get away with murder…hey, I wasn’t going to complain if it got me out of the rain!
I placed my buggy next to the other woman’s buggy and noticed that her daughter’s hand-eye coordination wasn’t all that great. Excellent! It meant she wasn’t much older than Roz (who at this point was the picture of calm as the bus engine lulled her to sleep).
And again,
“Oh, your baby’s gorgeous! Boy or girl?”
“Girl. Yours is so cute. How old is your …she? he?”
Blah,blah,blah, the usual… We exchanged numbers and said we’d go to the movies. That didn’t happen because of one thing or another and to be honest, I’d given up hope when I received a text asking if I’d like to meet for coffee instead.
There’s a local cafe about fifteen minutes fast walk from my apartment. Nothing to write home about really. The coffee’s average, the food is passable, but what I like about it is that they have a customer library. You can take any book they have on display, provided you leave one in turn. It works out great for picking up trashy romance novels and the odd gem. I picked up a Stephen King there on Monday and….okay, I digress.
Anyhoo, I dragged a screaming Roz in her buggy ( I honestly thought the fresh air would do her good and help her sleep – yeah, that Gina Ford is full of crap where my daughter’s concerned!) all the way to the Cafe and there were Faye and her little girl Effie.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve never been a great one for making friends, especially female ones, so I was nervous. Nervous, but determined. After all, we had one very big thing in common, our little babies. And boy, was it worth it. Turns out we have the same problems (ahem) issues with our babies. We both love the same sort of films, both thought we’d have oodles of time once the baby was born, to write that novel that’s been sitting in the backs of our minds and perfect our cooking skills while the baby slept peacefully . ha! We had a good old laugh at that one.
I don’t mean to be an intellectual snob, but Faye is an anthropologist, how cool is that! Two of my all time favourite writers, Steven Erikson and Oscar Lewis, are anthropologists. She wrote her masters dissertation in Australia on the aborigines. Again, how cool is that? (okay, obviously not cool if you find anthropology boring) but not me. Before I knew it, two hours had passed and it was time to now take a thankfully sleeping Roz home.
We made a date to go to the cinema last week, and met again yesterday for coffee. It’s exciting. It’s new, and have I mentioned that this is the first Irish woman I’ve talked to who doesn’t happen to be a friend’s girlfriend, or one of my workmates?…erm, this is one of the first Irish woman I’ve talked to who doesn’t happen to be a friend’s girlfriend, or one of my workmates. It’s different, it’s refreshing and finally, it looks like I may have a friend.
We’re making plans to spend long summer days in Phoenix park when the babies can sit up on their own, with picnics and books and sandwiches. And now that I’ve traded the buggy in for a cool sling wrap that Roz just adores, walks and bus rides are so much better.
Wish me luck!
**of course Faye and Effie are not their real names!
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