The day in question started off with an early morning check of my Blackberry and the upsetting news that a family history of breast cancer had caught up with a childhood friend. My heart sank. I looked outside at the dark morning. It was mid-June and the rain poured down. I tapped off a quick email of support and tried to stay positive about how the rest of the morning would unfold. But something in my gut told me this day was already shaping up to be what my kids would call “a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.” The apt description comes from the title of a classic storybook by Judith Viorst. My mother used to read it me. In the story, a young boy named Alexander endures a day in which nothing goes right from breakfast ’til bedtime. It never occurred to me until I read aloud from it to my twins recently that its message about facing down adversity could resonate with anyone of any age.
We tried hard to turn the day around. After their usual eggs and toast and some coaxing to put on their Thomas the Tank Engine and Hello Kitty rain coats, my son and daughter climbed into their stroller and we set off for the ten-block walk to their nursery school summer program. For weeks, the weather in New York City, our new home, had been uncharacteristically soggy. More than once, I heard people on the street complaining that it felt like we’d been transported to Seattle. Still, rather than take a taxi or try to find one in the rain, we saddled up the stroller with our wet weather gear and set off into the gray day just like every other mom, dad and nanny, hoofing it in the elements. If this is what it means to be a New York City mom, I thought, then I’m tough enough to handle it. Bring it on.
By 8:45, I thought the rain might have lightened up enough so that I could get the kids to school mostly dry and still walk back up to the gym to catch a 9:30 exercise class. But that was before we hit the Hole.
