From LA to Cobble Hill, Brooklyn

Oma Nanny of Cobble Hill:

From Downtown LA to Cobbble Hill, Brooklyn

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

I am sleepy, I have gotten up from a nap, it’s 1:15.  The babies, twins Gigi and Tess, were eating at 7:30 am, until 10:30 am.  Jordan, my daughter, is trying to rest on the couch. One baby goes down, one gets up.  I feel like I am in a dream world, I stagger down Court St. to the organic market next to "Body Elite" where Jordan works out. I carry a bag full of organic groceries, but not too heavy.  My back is spasming.

On the way to Jordan's "loft-apartment," I see a woman sort of staggering with a stroller and two carriers. At first I think it's a mother, but then I realize it's a grandmother. She looks tired and a little overwhelmed.  I come closer to the double stroller.  I ask if they are twins, she answers 7 months. We sit down in front of the Union Market and Susan tells me her story. Her daughter's twins were born in June, her daughter has moved to a small two-bedroom apartment in Cobble Hill, but it has a washer-dryer and an elevator.

Cobble Hill, home to more twins and writers than anywhere else in the country, is a very popular neighborhood in the northwest of Brooklyn. What we would call a "basement" one bedroom apartment in Cobble Hill can fetch $3600 a month.  The main streets, Court and Smith, are lined with small markets, baby shops, coffee houses like Café Pedlar, and Blue Marble Ice Cream where such flavors as “Pumpkin Pie” go for $8 dollars a pint, and lots of restaurants. It has an old fashioned movie theatre and it would not be complete without Cobble Hill Cleaners where you can wash or leave your laundry by the pound.  In the last few years it has become very “in,” not only because of its homey streets and tall brownstones, but it has some of the best public schools around.  Walk down the street and it's stroller city.  Everybody walks, carries groceries up and down three stories.  I’ve told my daughter it feels to me like the 19^th century. 

I have lived in California since 1982, first San Francisco, then LA.  I have to get pre-cancers burnt off several times a year.  I am used to the sun, driving, and hitting the mall where parking is no problem.  I am used to a washer and dryer.  The landlord is not god to me.  You go on the web and see any house you want and one agent shows it to you.  People are into how they look, their feelings, their script, their movie, their band, their hype, and everyone talks about program, meaning a self help program. In LA people don't have a party, they are always working, every event is a marketing opportunity.  Silver Lake and Echo Park, near downtown LA, are a hot scene for many young people.  Everything is spread out and traffic, traffic, traffic to get anywhere.  Public transportation, which they are trying to revive to some degree, does not exist for the average person.  Your car, BMW, Mercedes 500, says you have money.  LA likes success (the so called American dream), and likes to show one has arrived. 

I came to Brooklyn on October 26, 2012, supposedly for two to three weeks, because my daughter was having twins. She is a single mom, and I came out to "help".  "Oma" is grandma in German, something my other four grandchildren have been calling me for years. I am a nanny," but I can't lift more than 12 pounds, a back injury, and I don't watch the twins alone.  Though we've hired "baby nurses", "dula's" and nannies, the twins haven't been left alone with anyone except my daughter Jordan.

Brooklyn reminds me of St. Louis where I grew up.  It is dark, the streets are dark, the people are real.  They wear little makeup, no boob jobs, and the mothers wear sturdy shoes and boots to push their babies around. Their clothes are eclectic and speak of their individuality. These are real women, not the Kim Kardashian’s-Khloe’s of reality TV.

“I’m on a third floor walk-up” I tell Susan, the other grandmother of twins, because that’s where I am right now.

Susan marvels at that. “One of my twins is 15 pounds and the other one is 19. I wore a brace.  I came down to Cobble Hill the other day and my Sciatica started acting up again. I took Aleve, IB profren, everything, I’m too old for this” Susan says. “I’m 69, I’m decrepit. ”

“Well, I’m 62” I answer, something no one would say in LA.

            “My daughter had her children older” Susan laments. “She was forty.”

            “Same with me.”

            “I say, if you’d of had them at 30, I could of done this.”

            “My daughter in law did have them at 30, and I already have 4 grandchildren, the oldest is now 18.”

It starts to rain, we exchange phone numbers.  She comes down from upstate New York on Tuesdays.  We plan to meet. It turns out her daughter has just gone into The Writers Corner.  I guess she’s a writer.

            When I get back to the loft Jordan is sitting with the two babies feeding them their bottles; they are actually in car seats which we have been swearing to get them out of for weeks.  But they sleep well in them, and you can prop them up to feed two at a time.  The toilet has just over-flowed, the pea soup I bought has ham (for my vegetarian daughter) in it, one of the babies’ eyes is crossing, Jordan is in the technology business and she has almost landed a solid gig for the next year at a company she loves.  We need a full time nanny!  The landlady’s contractor fixes the toilet. We are embarrassed, but feel better.