Dining Out, Before Baby

“Maybe we should make some plans for the three-day weekend,” Andy suggested.The sentence was simple enough, but it was rich with meaning. My husband was really saying, “Thanks to this pregnancy, we’re stuck here in the city yet again, and there’s only so many times you can see ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin.'”I was too far along, my doctor said, to be more than an hour away from the hospital.“I’d love to make plans,” I said – in our marriage, “maybe we should make plans” means “maybe Eve should make plans” – “but I think everyone else will be going away.”“You’re probably right,” Andy said glumly. I decided against reminding him that spending the weekend here in Brooklyn would mean another chance to eat at all the restaurants our friends with children kept telling us we should enjoy before the baby’s arrival.We had been advised to “go out to eat now, while you can” over and over for the past few months, which, it would seem, implies we should be happy to be grounded in the city, because once the baby is here, we’ll be trapped in the apartment.But I was skeptical. Parents of babies surely enjoyed meals out, at least occasionally. What about that $700 stroller touted on its advertisements as having a seat high enough for a baby to sit comfortably a table? Granted, I’ve only seen one of them in action in our neighborhood, but they are supposedly very popular among Europeans. And, as any expectant parent knows, the word “European” in baby-gear lingo is code for the sophisticated, stylish maintenance of one’s own lifestyle in spite of one’s offspring. It also, in most cases, means spending big bucks.More to the point, what about all of those couples dining al fresco on Smith Street with sleeping babies snug in the infant car seat/Snap-N-Go wheel-base combo currently waiting to be snapped off my baby registry? And what about just getting a baby-sitter?I had a feeling that Andy and I would continue to go out to dinner after the baby, at least occasionally. But in the meantime, I spent the early part of this week trying to rustle up some plans. First, I called Maya on her cell phone. As it happened, she was already out of town.“I’d love to see you, sweetie,” she said, “but this is the last weekend of my country-house share. Everyone’ll be here and we’re having a party.” Apparently, she and her fellow-artist country-house sharers were cooking up a seven-course meal at their place outside Rhinebeck. It all sounded very Tuscany-on-the-Hudson. “You guys should come up,” she said. “I bet you can still find a room at a B&B near here.”“I wish we could,” I said. “But I can’t be more than an hour away from the hospital.”“Oh, honey,” she said. “Well, do something fun in the city. Go to the movies. ‘The 40-Year-Old Virgin’ is supposed to be funny.”I thanked her and wished her a fun time feasting. Then I dialed Hallie. Maybe she and her fiance, Mark, would be available. “We’d love to see you guys,” she said. “But we’re going to my parents’ place on Long Beach Island. You guys should come out and stay the night. If you leave Saturday and come home Sunday, you might not hit any traffic.”I explained the doctor’s orders.“Bummer,” she said. “But let’s get together sometime next week then. We should go out to dinner while you guys still can.”I thought about telling her we’d still be eating out after the baby was born, but instead I said, “Sounds like a plan.”Resigning myself to another weekend at home, I headed out to the store. If we were going to be home by ourselves because I was pregnant, we should at least have plenty of ice cream in the freezer.In the frozen foods section of the Met, I saw a familiar figure: Matthew, my platonic childhood friend.“Hey, you,” I said, tapping him affectionately. “You better not be taking the last mint chocolate chip.”“Hey,” he said, letting go of the freezer door to embrace me. “Wow, you’re really getting big!”I nodded and said, “I should have guessed I’d find you here in the ice cream section.” His wife – my nemesis, Courtney – was just as pregnant as I was.“Hey,” he said, “how far along are you now?” When I told him, he said, “Wait, then are you guys grounded this weekend too?”“Yeah,” I said, mustering a smile. I could see where the train was heading, but could think of no way to stop it.“Then we should definitely get together,” he said. “We’re the only people left in the city.”“Yeah,” I said, resigning myself to a rendezvous with Courtney.And then, of course, Matthew suggested a plan: “We should go out to dinner,” he said, “while we still have the chance.The Brooklyn Chronicles, a work of fiction, appears each Friday. Previous installments are available at www.nysun.com/archive_chronicles.php. The author can be reached at kschwartz@nysun.com.

Dining Out, Before Baby

Dining Out, Before Baby

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