Push Hour

We’re told Spain needs babies. Statistics have the birthrate slumping down near sub-replacement levels; demographers report that if not for the reproductive efforts of immigrant populations, a Spain of Golden Girls would already be upon us — a country for old men, and of them. But if all of this is true, you wouldn’t know it in Puente Genil. Around here, stores with names like Dulce Bebé (Sweet Baby), Los Peques (The Small Ones), and Little Kings (Little Kings) do brisk business catering to the vagaries of moda infantil (infant fashion). Family-portrait studios appear to be surviving the economic downturn reasonably well, and clothing outlets can be counted on to carry maternity wear. Puente Genil may have been spared American fast-food chains for now, but Dulce Bebe has three stores in Puente Genil, in as many blocks. Even as a venerable local real-estate firm recently closed up shop, a new baby-shoe store — not a shoe store with baby shoes, not a baby clothes store with baby shoes, but a baby-shoe store, cobbler to the recently fetal — opened up in its place. If Spain really is aging, it would seem to be doing so somewhere else.

The time to really appreciate our local fecundidad is dusk, when the sidewalks fill with prams and the people who push them. Once you have processed the sheer quantity of prams, you’ll note that these are not your standard, run-of-the-mill baby carriages. They are double-dually soft-top convertibles fully optioned with cup holders, cargo bays, antiskid handbrakes, collapsible umbrellas, and detachable windshields. If you didn’t know any better, you might think that the many passersby who stop to fawn over a pram’s wee passenger are stopping to fawn over the tricked-out pram. The fawning itself might properly be called Extreme Fawning. It includes feats of facial twisting, elaborate blathering, and sometimes even drooling, all on the part of adults.

With the quantity of prams on the sidewalk, and the frequency with which they stop to allow for Extreme Fawning, pram jams are inevitable. Afternoon push hour regularly finds the sidewalks clogged. It’s a wonder but also maybe a blessing that no one has developed horns for prams. The rules of the road mean that the larger, less maneuverable prams have right of way. A six-wheeled twin pram naturally requires more time and space for operations than a simple four-wheeler, especially when turning right. In cases of Extreme Fawning, the rules of the road are tacitly relaxed, but beware the young mother-of-twins in a hurry, with somewhere to be: like an automobile, a six-wheeled twin pram can be used as a kind of weapon, to bully, badger, and prod. At this hour, a visitor is best advised to stand to the side of the action, at a safe remove.

Standing at a safe remove during push hour, an observer might learn a thing or two about life.  One thing a visitor might learn is that right from the start being a mother involves a lot of pushing. Invariably more than a few of our pram-wranglers show evidence of a second or third pregnancy, and watching an expectant mother walk by, an observer can’t help thinking that although a pregnant woman is said to be “carrying” a child, she’s not really carrying the thing so much as pushing it along, with her hips. The belly of an ambulatory pregnant woman does not droop and threaten to drop, like an armload of groceries: it protrudes resolutely and moves parallel to the ground, and the mother-to-be appears to be pushing it along through space. From an engineering perspective, her shoulders bowed rearwards in the interest of counterbalance, an expectant mother might be said to capably “carry,” as in “bear,” her allotted load, like a well positioned I-beam or buttress; but an expectant mother, however parabolic her design, is not an engineering project, and an observer can’t help thinking that the portly, not-pregnant passersby might more appropriately be said to be “carrying” weight, as the weight in question tends to neither withstand gravity nor respond to counterbalance quite so well, instead sagging and flagging as though it would in fact fall to the earth if it were not held, that is to say carried, properly.

For a mother there is of course a critical period between pushing the belly along and pushing the pram along, which period, although generally not observable on the street during push hour, also involves a lot of pushing. If medical documentaries and personal accounts are to be trusted, this pushing is a pushing of a much more disagreeable sort, so much more disagreeable that without the promise of a newborn at the other end, it might be called corporal punishment, and anybody in their right mind would actively avoid it.

The more disagreeable pushing accomplished and consigned to memory, or in some cases DVD, we come at last come to the pushing of the pram. Judging by push hour, the new mother is not left alone in this: friends and relations and even husbands can be expected to volunteer for this kind of pushing on occasion. And judging by the flash in the eyes of new mothers, the pride with which they welcome Extreme Fawning, this sort of pushing is not disagreeable at all, which perhaps explains why a husband can be counted on to volunteer for it on occasion — just as he could be counted on to volunteer for another, distinctly male form of pushing at the very outset of the whole process, which distinctly male form of pushing set the various other, distinctly female forms of pushing into motion.

As much fanfare as surrounds the prams during push hour, the observer will note that another, less commanding demographic is being pushed along, too: elders, in wheelchairs. It so happens that small-town Andalucía is as likely a place to conclude a life as it is to begin one; like sweetshops and portrait studios, medical-supply stores do well here. During afternoon push hour, an observer will likely conclude that generally it is better to be a newborn than an elder, at least if you go in for attention, recognition, human contact, that sort of thing. This may strike the observer as a little curious. Presumably a newborn, being newly born, has no real way to value attention, recognition, human contact, that sort of thing, and may just as well shriek murderously and soil itself when offered as much; whereas an elder, being elder, having spent a reasonable length of time alive on earth, would presumably very much understand the value of recognition, attention, human contact, that sort of thing, even if he or she happened to soil himself or herself when offered as much.

The observer standing at a safe remove will note that one wheelchair looks much like another. Each is constructed of stainless alloys and stain-resistant vinyl upholstery. Each features the eponymous wheels and chair, a pair of adjustable footrests, and a pair of ergonomic hand-grips. In contrast to a juiced-up pram, a wheelchair is invariably so plain and utilitarian as to seem a little vulgar. This may help explain why a wheelchair situation does not generally inspire Extreme Fawning. If a wheelchair situation inspires any interaction at all, it is a perfunctory interaction at best, and tends to involve the pusher of the wheelchair more than the pushed. In fact most pedestrians appear vaguely repelled by a wheelchair situation, and will give such a situation wide berth before hastily moving on to the next available pram. It’s as though the prams’ tiny unseen passengers have done something remarkable, something that merits reward and celebration, while the elder, fully visible passengers have failed in something, perhaps even committed some wrong.

Often a detail in the face of the wheelchair pusher — the line of the nose, the cast of the chin, the arc of the eyebrows — will suggest a close blood relation to the pushed, in which case a role reversal may be on offer. Back when the body now capable of pushing was in need of pushing, the body now in need of pushing pushed. In such a way the fanfare surrounding the pushing of prams might be viewed as a kind of inadvertent hedge against future wheelchair situations: when it is time for roles to reverse, the body that is now in need of pushing may, if necessary, remind the body that is now capable of pushing that a great deal of pushing was done for his or her benefit way back when, when it was not capable of pushing.

Afternoon push hour might be said, then, to aptly stage the circle of human life. Watching an elder in a wheelchair and a newborn in a pram pass each other, an observer may be inclined to draw a conclusion about said human life before walking on: shortly after a freshly minted body comes into the world, it is pushed along and celebrated for a while, and shortly before an aging body leaves the world, it is pushed along and tolerated for a while. What a body will find itself doing in between, it would seem, is pushing.

Or standing at a safe remove.

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Charlie Geer is the author of the novel “Outbound: The Curious Secession of Latter-Day Charleston.” His work has appeared in Tin House, The Sun, Bloomsbury Magazine, and The Southern Review.