By: Aaron Petrovich
Seven years in a small New York City apartment has made my wife and I very intentional about what goes into our living space. Counter space is heavily contested, closets are overflowing, and cabinet items are placed like puzzle pieces. It’s a delicate ecosystem balancing function and aesthetic; think toasters balanced on microwaves and couches tucked between dubious drywall indents. Sacrifices must be made and the old must be pushed out to make room for the new. Thrifting a bread maker means the Instant Pot hits Facebook Marketplace almost immediately and the entire kitchen needs reorganizing. In our tiny one bedroom, clutter and accumulation appear as the luxuries of the suburbanite.
Some part of me can’t help but be jealous of those with more space. I have friends renovating real homes while I remodel my virtual village in Animal Crossing. Cousins around my age all seem to be having babies while the only babies my wife and I are nursing are the food babies from the massive burritos we get down the street whenever we don’t feel like cooking. For whatever reason, I’ve been longing to build or craft something of my own. Maybe it’s a universal human desire to have a physical expression of our labor and identity. Perhaps it’s some lingering capitalist or patriarchal nugget lodged in my brain that I have yet to unpack — in any case, I have no diagnosis, only the symptom.
Sometime between the multiple massive snow storms that covered the tri-state area this year a solution seemed to float right into my hands: a Singer sewing machine from the 1980s uncovered in the basement of a family friend. As I had recently spoken about potentially sewing — or at least repairing — costumes for my school’s annual musical, my friend so graciously suggested I be its newfound owner. It felt like it was meant to be — a new skill with results you can touch and see, that are permanent. In a rare stroke of architectural magic, I even found the perfect space to tuck the machine away beside the couch — no reorganizing or swapping required.
Further ingraining my belief that I was destined to sew was the discovery that I lived less than a mile from a sewing machine repair shop. After a couple of days with a quiet and kind couple, who have owned and operated the repair shop for decades, my new machine was returned with a clean bill of health. All that was left was to procrastinate doing any of my usual duties, watch a bunch of YouTube tutorials, and start sewing.
Oh, the dreams I had for that machine in the early days. It felt like a childhood Christmas, unwrapping its off-white carrying case with solid red stripes — new costumes made instead of bought, pants given a second life, gifts sewn for my cousin’s soon to arrive baby. The machine itself is a modest beige and is able to perform a few basic stitches. I carefully strung the green thread that was left in the carrying case exactly as the manual described and prepared to wind my first bobbin. I plugged in the dated power cord, flicked the on switch, and tepidly pressed the foot peddle to be greeted with the delightful hum of the machine. Directions well followed!
It was a rapid decline from there on. I dove back into the manual, carefully threaded the string and placed the bobbin. I toyed with each setting one last time before lining up a folded fabric scrap to make my first real stitch. In the end, a mess of string glued the fabric to the machine, but nothing that 20 minutes with some scissors and tweezers couldn’t fix. Three hours spent on that first day felt like enough, and I returned the machine to its old case and slid it beside the couch.
Since that first day, I have figured out how to make the machine work properly. I completed a few small test projects and repaired some personal clothes and costumes for my school, but nothing like l dreamed about that first day. After learning the very basics, life started to get in the way. The pants I left by the nightstand because I wanted to take them out a couple inches got put away. The musical started to get closer and costumes I meant to make started to get ordered on Amazon. That one hurt, but as the weather got warmer the machine continued to come out less and less. Now the machine seems to stare back at me from beside the couch just to remind me that sometimes you have physical space for something but not the space in the rest of your life.
If I can’t find the time and energy for something as simple as a sewing machine, how am I supposed to do anything other people my age are doing? A house? A dog? A kid??? There is no kitchen appliance I could swap out to make enough room for any of those things in my life. Something more important would have to be sacrificed.
My wife and I are both 32 — still too young to be parents by artsy-progressive-NYC transplant standards, but we both have always talked about having two kids. It seemed like such a hypothetical when we were in our 20s, but back then I imagined we’d have our first child in our early 30s. Well, here we are — still in a one bedroom; and yet, despite lots of (valid) push back from every person I’ve told this, I really think we could make space. The rocking chair we’ve had since college could be removed to make way for a cradle. Sell the bar cart and replace it with some much more sensible storage item from IKEA. The sewing machine could, of course, be moved to my school for safe keeping. It would be cramped, but the neighbors have two kids in the same sized space and they seem okay!
Moving around objects in an apartment is safe to think about, as if it were a puzzle or a game. Fitting a child into the rest of our lives feels a touch more intimidating.
Instead of swapping furniture, there are bigger questions to be answered. If we have a kid, what will we have to give up in the other aspects of our lives? How many hobbies will I just stop doing? Learning to sew was hard enough without kids. How many happy hours will I miss? It’s already difficult to see friends as much as I want. What trips will I not go on? We’ve never been to South America. What sacrifices will my wife have to make in her career? How the hell am I going to find time to work out or cook a nice meal? Could I still get stoned and walk around the park alone with my wife? No! We would have to take some needy little intruder with us! The questions go on and on.
I love my life right now, but it already feels like it’s bursting at the seams. How the fuck does anyone stitch on a whole additional person without coming undone?
I can hear my parent’s response. “You’ll find a way.” I don’t want to hear it! What do they know anyway? Plus they’re biased as hell! They just want grandkids!
On the other hand, I can’t help but smile thinking about our parents as grandparents. My mom poorly recording a stupid dance recital. My dad making up goofy games to play. Or our sisters as aunts?! (I’m writing this in a public space, so I actually can’t think about that one too much without becoming undone.) Not to mention our sisters’ partners, extended family, and countless friends who would be amazing and important parts of our child’s life.
It might be foolish of me to be so confident, but I really think we would have an amazing team of people to help our kids grow into the best version of themselves. It’s a big ask for our loved ones too really, but they seem to be excited to show up for us in that way, and I’m excited to let them.
So what is it that I’m hoping to get in return for giving up our beautiful little two-person life? When it’s just us two and a crying baby, what is there to be gained? Maybe it’s small things like being a safe pair of arms for the baby to sleep, introducing them to new food and music, or finally having a good excuse for being so tired at work. It’s for sure some hubris too. As imperfect as we are, I think we are going to be great at raising kids and I think that challenge will be worth it. I hope our child agrees. I hope they have funny ideas that scare me and push me to live my life more purposefully and ethically. I hope I learn twice as much from them as they learn from me. I hope they are my worst fears and headaches and my greatest laughs and dreams. I hope they grow up to be thoughtful, kind, and happy. I hope they are a good hang on walks in the park with my wife. I hope they get really good at something like sewing.
For now though, it’s a deep breath and a strong thread of faith that things work out either way. It might be a little later than planned. It might not be at all, but if the time comes, I’ll be happy to make the space.
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