A mother wanders alone around with the stroller in 30-degree Stockholm in the middle of July. All friends are away on vacation and there is nowhere to go with a small baby, in addition to the open preschool and parent group she attends. The daily life surrounds her like a wet blanket, and she lives in her own emotional microcosm. Who has she been? And above all: Who will she become?
I walk like a nobody behind the stroller and press it forward with all my might. I go over old chewing gums stuck and shaped into round, dark tracks on the road. I still have not gotten used to this. I still wonder who is walking here with this stroller. I look at the people around me, wondering what it is they see when they look back at me. I would like to ask them. What did you see before, when it was just me? Does it show that I’m a mother now? I am no longer Agnes, twenty-nine years, the receptionist. How have I changed? What does this new me really want?
In Baby Blues the author circles around issues of parenting and of belonging. How does one go about to remain an independent person when the outside world so intensely want to insert another, when one’s life is defined by what they do rather than who they are? Baby Blues is an amusing but disturbing novel right here and now – a blues over all things transience that has an nusual sound of solfège and sharpness.