Baby’s night out

Photo: daytrippingmom.com

So I was invited to dinner at a friend’s on Saturday night and after a delicious meal and a good amount of vino rosso (red wine), I headed back home down Via Pietro Calvi. As I’m merrily recording a voice note for my friend while I walk, something I see stops me in my tracks: a man and a woman are walking along and they’re pushing a baby stroller!

You don’t understand.

• Number 1: Why do these peeps have their baby roaming the streets of Milan at 11pm on a Friday night!?
• Number 2: That little lightie (Zim* slang for “child”) is bundled up with its tiny face obscured by an ocean of faux-fur. Clearly it’s freezing but because it has no rights it is being carted about in the dead of night with no way to get out of its misery.

I wait for them to pass me before telling my voice note-friend how horrified I am to witness this nonsense. I mean, how desperate are peeps for some fun times that they will drag their baby out at midnight?! It feels cruel and desperate.

While I am judging them, and feeling quite justified, I walk past a restaurant that is clearly in the middle of Family Hour. In that moment, a couple with their 4-year-old-seeming child is saying goodbye to the hostess and bundling into jackets and scarves. The table in the window is happily yapping away with their excited-looking under-10-year-old children. In plain sight!

In this moment I realise that maybe I am the one who is confused because they are clearly living normal Milanese Friday night lives, having a gas (Zim slang for “a good time”) with their kids.

So, as I step back from my judgment, I wonder whether this is a cultural thing. I, for one, have never seen Zimbabwean families out and about after-hours with their young infants in tow. It almost feels like a scandalous idea – how dare you have nighttime fun with your 3-year old child, you bad parents!

Secondly, I am African and dying in these sub-9 degree Celsius temperatures. I have had to find a way to convince myself that freezing ≠ (does not equal) dying, even though it feels like I am, just so I can lead a normal life outdoors. I can’t imagine how a tiny, fragile baby can even cope in such extreme weather conditions, but maybe it has a genetic resistance to the cold and I’m the one who’s weak??

Thirdly, maybe that infant is not being cruelly deprived of sleep just so peeps can drink some vino at midnight. Maybe peeps just happen to eat at midnight and they can’t very well do so without their children… I don’t know.

Anyway, the marginal utility of me continuing to go on about this is now about zero. But I was shocked and figured you non-Milanese would be shocked too. Does this happen in other cities? I hear New Yorkers are also culprits of Fun Times With Kids at Midnight.

Truth is, I admire people that don’t let babies hold them back from continuing to live their fabulous lives, and I think there’s something incredibly endearing about wanting to include the whole fam in the nighttime festivities. I probably just need to be less appalled when I see it.

** Zim = Zimbabwe