Food Friday- thinking about motherhood edition

At the end of January local news was filled with this tragic story A young mother died when she fell carrying her child in a stroller down a flight of subway steps.

Of course, it brought me back to my own years managing travel in the city with one two or three small children. When my own kids were little, with minimal exceptions there were no elevators on the subway.

If it were at all possible I walked. I would set out either north or south, usually along Broadway with my child strapped into a stroller and a backpack filled with diapers, wipes, changes of clothing, snacks and blankets either looped on the stroller handles or on my back.

In those days I walked miles every day. The backpack also usually contained some sort of a baby carrier because there are times a baby gets fussy and needs to be held and there just aren't enough arms to manage both baby and all of the stuff one needs when out with a baby.

There are times when you need to venture out of the neighborhood. I would walk to the subway station, be sure to get out of the flow of traffic and get ready for the transition to the subway. The diaper bag got lifted from the back of the stroller, because if you lift your baby out of the stroller first then the stroller will be unbalanced and the stroller will tip over backward as you are lifting your baby out. You then pull out the baby carrier and do the gymnastics of wrangling your baby into the carrier while keeping an eye on your belongings and keeping y.our baby from crying. the carrier is now secure. You, while carrying your baby and your diaper bag, lean down and release the latch on the stroller allowing it to fold and fall to the ground. The loaded backpack is on your back. Your baby is either tethered to your hip or to your chest, you lean down being sure to keep your center of gravity balanced so you don't tip over, pick up the stroller and head down the subway steps.

This dance has variations. You can also do the subway steps with your child is in the stroller. The diaper bag goes on your shoulders. If you are smart you have a backpack as a diaper bag. Most diaper bags are designed to be slung over just one shoulder.

You then lift the stroller and put most of the stroller weight against your hip as you carefully make your way down the steps. Hope that your child doesn't suddenly shift their weight- because if they do, you know you will tumble down the steps.

During the years that I was doing the stroller dance I was stunned at how often people offered to help me up or down the subway steps. Both who offered help and how often people offered to help really changed how I understood living in New York .

When my oldest was an infant and managing the subway steps with a baby was new to me a homeless man offered to help me carry the stroller down the steep steps. I was touched and assumed that this was a lovely but transactional act. I offered him some money when we got to the bottom of the steps. He refused. I realized that I needed to revisit the Chassidic teaching that every human contains the spark of the divine.

I sometimes refused offers of help- it is difficult to safely shift the weight of a stroller mid staircase. But over and over a wonderful cross-section of the city helped me carry strollers up and down subway steps.

After my own stroller years were done I have never not offered to help people with their strollers. I feel it is the least I could do to repay the kindnesses of so many people who helped me for so many years.

I started writing this post yesterday. Before I could complete it my son came to me with the shocking news that the boy who sat next to him in math in 6th grade was just arrested for murdering his mother. You can Google the story it's pretty horrible.

Since hearing the news we have been alternating between feeling truly awful and thinking about how broken the relationship must have been between mother and son, and gallows humor when we ask one another to fold laundry or help making Shabbat dinner and wonder if a refusal is grounds for committing murder.

The humor is just helping us process the terrible news.

But the two of us worked today to create a Shabbat meal on a day when most of us are in need of comfort for one reason or another.

Pictured here is spiced lemon-maple chicken and a zucchini and red pepper kugel.

My son reduced a giant bag of onions into a small bowl of caramelized onions.

Finally, how to braid challah using only two strands.

Take hold of the strand furthest on the left, weave it over and under all of the strands to the right.

Now there is a new strand all the way on the left, weave that one under and over the strands on the right. Keep going until you can't braidanymoree.

 Tuck the ugly end under the challah.

Let your challot rise for about two hours.

Turn your oven up high, to at least 400 but as high as 450 is fine too. When the oven reaches the proper heat (or as we say here  " when the oven goes ding ding ding") put the tray of challah in the oven and turn the heat down to 385.

Bake until your challot are chestnut brown and sound hollow when thunked.

Shabbat Shalom!