Embrace the cold 🥶

What one long bike commute has taught me about creative parenting

Every weekday, my partner and I do something that is deeply confusing to many other parents we know — both in the place where we met, as well as the one where we now live.

I grew up in the United States. Where I’m from in the land of long car commutes, it’s not at all abnormal to drive 20 to 30 minutes to drop one’s kid off at school.

In Germany on the other hand, where I have settled down and made my home, it’s quite common to bring young kids to school or Kita (Kindertagestätte = German day care for our international readers) on a bicycle. An obvious tell for almost any parent with small children is the presence of that extra seat following your bike around until further notice. You know the one I’m talking about.

The moment I joined the tribe

The confusing part is when you put these two things together.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that relatively few school runs in the United States happen on two wheels.

Whereas in Germany, it’s quite rare for those bike commutes to the Kita to be any longer than 10 or 15 minutes at the most.

Not so for us.

Due to a combination of family decisions that made sense when we made them, my partner and I spend about twice that amount of time bringing our two kids to Kita: each way, every day. That’s nearly an hour per day on the bike, for each of us, built into our daily routines. Yes, I’ve done the calculation. It’s 12% of my week.

How did we get here? It doesn’t really matter. If I had a euro for every time this topic comes up in small talk with other parents, I’d be able to take my co-parent out on a nice dinner date.

Have I tried taking a shorter route? Yes, I’ve got about 5 that I like to switch between. They all take 25 minutes.

Isn’t it better than being in a car? Most of the time, yes. We invested in e-bikes a couple of years ago, and for about 8 months out of the year, I enjoy my long daily bike rides across the city.

So, what’s the issue?

Perhaps you know where I’m going with this.

Winter sucks, everyone knows it

It starts every year with the hands.

Sometime around mid-October, when the nights start getting colder and the mornings don’t warm up as fast as they used to, the numbness in my fingers holding onto the bike handlebars brings with it a painful realization.

It’s time to wear gloves again.

The rest of the dominoes fall quickly after that. A week or so after the gloves come out for the first time, my neck sends me chilly reminders that my scarf collection should follow. Soon after, the baseball hats I often wear under my bike helmet begin getting replaced by beanies. Vests are worn as an additional, heat-retaining layer. At some point before the first of December, I will look at the morning temperature and decide I am not doing this bike ride without wearing long underwear.

By Christmas, my chin and cheeks will declare that a scarf and hat are insufficient. I will haul out my facemask, and the cycle will be complete. Vanity will be cast aside. As a pre-requisite for going to work, I will bike at least 15 kilometers through the streets of Berlin each day, towing a bike trailer with my kids in the back, looking like this:

Another year: another summer, another winter.

What if it’s not so bad?

This year, we decided to get away. We spent a month including the Christmas holidays in Spain, where there’s no day care but at least it’s sunny and warm.

No one should feel sorry for me. But I spent much of our least week there dreading what it would be like to come back to Berlin.

There were reports of polar vortexes, snow and ice, January temperatures as low as they’ve been in years.

I kept tensing up thinking about those freezing morning bike rides.

But also: what if there was some wisdom to be found in these cold commutes?

What if the physical discomfort that I felt bringing my kids to Kita everyday had something to teach me about the general discomforts of juggling work, family and everything in between?

Am I working enough? Am I good enough parent? Do I have enough time to pursue my goals? Am I spending enough time with my kids?

If there’s anything I have learned from talking to other parents with young children, discomfort seems like a good word to describe what so many of us are feeling.

The daily demands of role conflict and colliding ambitions make us feel insecure, overwhelmed, uncertain.

Society already puts massive pressure on all of us to be more, do more, achieve more. Fueled by endless ‘advice’, comparisons and social media reminders about all the ways we are getting this wrong, modern parenting culture gives us one more reason to doubt whether we will ever be good enough.

With every deadline and every tantrum, the stress is compounded.

But in coming to terms with this all over the last year or so, I’ve also noticed something.

My kids are 2 and 4, and 2024 was one of the most intense years of my professional life. My daily routine is batshit right now.

But the more resistance I put up against the load of pressures weighing upon me, the heavier it makes them feel.

Those moments where I’m able to let go and own it, where I’m able to embrace the daily limits and accept whatever can be done (or not) in a day… this is where, ironically, I feel the most on top of things.

Creativity is ultimately fueled by constraints. In my experience, so is peace of mind.

What does this all have to do with biking in the cold?

Winter still sucks.

When I finish writing this Substack draft that’s been sitting on my desk since we returned from our holiday in Spain two weeks ago, I’m going to put on my layers, get on my bike, and go pick up my kids.

It’s going to be cold. At some point during the commute, it’s also going to get dark.

On my bike, I’ll probably be thinking about my to-do list. My Mondays are short right now: my older daughter has a music class at 5pm, which means I have a hard stop at 3:45 in order to leave home, pick her and her brother up and get there on time. It’s always a challenge to pack everything in. Most likely, I’ll be working tonight after the kids go to bed.

I’m not going to pretend that my attitude is always positive. On the worst of these bike commutes when it’s raining or especially cold and gray, I question everything.

Should we get a new Kita?

Should we move somewhere else?

Is this ride really worth it?

Wait, why do we live here?

But in the two weeks since we’ve come back at least, I’ve learned something from letting it all in.

At the end of the day, I can’t do anything about the cold, and I can’t do anything (or choose not to do anything) about the circumstances in my life that force me to ride my bike through it. So I decided to try embracing it.

By pushing ourselves to accept what we cannot control, we build our strength to continue facing the unknown.

So whether it’s related to creative time, professional tasks, a difficult phase of parenting or your own daily commute, I encourage you to try embracing the cold.

It’s not going to make the difficult things any less difficult. But it might make them a little bit easier to handle.

I’ll let you know if I still feel this way after another two weeks 😅

To all of our new and existing community members: thanks for being here! Our first parent profile will be live later in the week.

If you haven’t yet discovered the Creative Parenting Chat, it’s a more informal space to share thoughts, ideas and experiences related to the themes and topics we’re all dealing with on a daily basis. Last week we launched our very first thread on the topic of “your craziest creative parenting day”. If you’ve got something you’d like to share, please feel welcome to jump in!

See you all back here in a few days. Until then, stay warm — and embrace the cold.