Our son Freddy is three. Ever since he was little he’s loved his “baby”, which is a little toy baby. He cuddles baby when he’s feeling cuddly. He throws baby on the floor when he’s mad, then asks for baby back. It’s as close to a comfort blanket as he has, and he also has a comfort blanket. But the toy baby is the thing.
Last week we lost the toy baby.
Fred took it for a walk down to Manhattan Youth, a little play center in Tribeca where he loves to see the turtles. On the way back, somewhere, baby fell out of his stroller. At least, that’s what we surmise. We didn’t realize this at the time but in mid-afternoon he asked for “baby” and a frantic search began. Calm at first. Frantic after 20 minutes. You can imagine.
I’ve ordered three extra babies in the past from the manufacturer, a brand called Lovevery. When we lost a baby, a baby would reappear.
“Baby had a bath,” we’d tell Freddy, when he eyed the new one with suspicion. But we’ve managed to work our way through those. I ordered another two but they wouldn’t arrive for another week, and that’s a lot of time to go without. My wife stuck a message on a local message board asking if anyone had a spare in the meantime.
About 8pm, I got a text from a mom at our playgroup, with the picture above attached.
“Dolly has been rescued,” the mom wrote.
“What the f__k!” I wrote. “Where?”
She’d found baby at the corner of Hudson Street near Canal. I told her, “$100”.
But she wouldn’t take it.
“I walked past it and thought it looked familiar,” she said. “Then I saw your wife’s message on the board.”
She brought it round and problem solved. Fred hadn’t even registered baby’s sejour since we’d distracted him with TV. But it was a close-run thing. A near miss.
The odds of retrieving a baby doll in Manhattan on a Thursday afternoon are long at best. But New York can be surprising in how small it is, too, sometimes. I’m so grateful for a caring community of people here and for Baby’s amazing retrieval!
—Matt Davis is a communications consultant and writer for a wide variety of clients. He also teaches yoga and lives with his wife and son in New York.
