Leave Your Children on an Island (Part 2 of 3)

A continuation

PART ONE:

PART TWO:

We got on the ferry. I was silent the entire time staring at the horizon like a sailor’s wife searching for his ship’s safe return. I do not recall the trip to the hotel because my organs were shutting down one by one from sheer panic. Then my husband said something that changed the trajectories of our lives. He said it in a voice like a dog owner trying to perk up his dog’s ears using key words:

“Maybe when we get to the hotel we can order a big room service lunch and eat on the balcony so we’re full in case the VIP Tent doesn’t have enough food?”

“Okay,” I shrugged. I was on fucking vacation.

We walked into the hotel lobby, which was by divine intervention a bar, and I immediately ordered a glass of rosé wine that reminds me of when I graduated college and stayed with my friend in Paris and had no problems except maybe looking too good in a belted trench coat, and I injected it directly into my jugular. I felt great (day drunk) and announced (yelled) “Let’s pound some chicken Caesar salads and see some fricken tunes, bro.” My husband regretted choosing to attend the college where we met.

I went on to tell every person we interacted with that we had left our children for the first time.

“Would you like to use the hotel’s complimentary car service?”

“Yes thank you. This is our first time away from our children. One is almost four and one is one.”

“This is the historic downtown. Have you been to Newport before?”

“Nope. And we’re here without our children, ages four and one, whom we left for the first time.”

“Welcome, shuttle bus riders! Are you excited for the folk festival?”

“Yes, we’re excited. He knows all the acts and I’m just excited to be away from the kids. HAHAHAHA!”

“You need backstage credentials to enter this tent.”

“We have them! Here’s mine! He’s press, and I’m just a mom! Away from our kids for the first time!”

“Would you like an oyster?”

“Wow! I’ll take two! One for each kid that we left home!”

“I have been playing in an extremely famous musician’s band all summer and I’ve been on tour in Europe. I am friends with your husband. Let’s have an interesting conversation in a cool VIP tent about being on tour in Europe.”

“No thanks! I have two children, one’s a baby and one is four, and this is actually the first time we’ve both been away from them!”

It was awful.

As the afternoon cooled and my rosé flush faded into a sloggy, sharpened awareness I noticed other families around us wrangling their kids. We are not Concert Parents. We do not take our kids to cool adult places and though we own those cartoonishly large noise-cancelling baby headphones for the idea of taking them to a concert, we have not used them.

Some of us are a mom in aviators and a leopard print baby carrier waving a beer in one hand and a pacifier in the other, but I am a mom who politely likes that mom’s Instagram post as my kid plays on the playground equipment closest to our house. In my personal experience, it can be fun to take a newborn places as long as you don’t mind having to shush and soothe a screaming potato in front of your friends and strangers. It can be fun to take a toddler to adult spaces as long

We were on vacation before having children (of course) and noticed a family with three small, perfect children all dressed in fancy little white linen outfits eating at a table with a fancy white linen tablecloth. “This will be us,” I said to my husband. “We will do this.” Due to not 100% successfully internalizing the lessons in How to Raise a French Child Who is Better Than Your Disgusting American Children this is not us. Our toddler is unfailingly polite (he once apologized to a fire hydrant) but at a restaurant, his mood can best be described as Running. Our baby is perfect and we could absolutely take him to Buckingham Palace if invited, but he does have a habit of finishing his meal and rubbing the remaining food in his hair. The reason for this is they have only been alive, as I have mentioned, for less than four years and are operating with the brain function of very smart, often shockingly well-spoken monkeys.

With toddlers, there are realms “For Them” (museums with animals and planets, zoos, parks, playgrounds, friends’ houses, a padded room full of someone else’s toys) and there are realms “For Us” (concerts, restaurants, movies, non-family or frankly all weddings) and in my time as the decider of where we go and how many of us go there, keeping them separate is generally great. This is not the case for everyone! But it should be! (The downside to this is we have not done anything fun in an entire presidential administration. Also ignore all of this if you have two nannies and four assistants and a household staff. Do whatever you want. Host the Grammy’s. Fly to Ibiza. God bless.)

As I looked around at the other families with kids, I tried to give my best empathetic “Been There” look to parents who were — I am ashamed to admit how vindicated it made me feel — wishing they were dead. I saw a parent hand a baby to his partner and say “Your turn!” before jogging away as if he were passing her a stick of lit dynamite. I saw far more parents just trying to appease crying, complaining, exhausted, bored kids. There was a “family tent” with activities set up. Even cool parents take their kids to the playground. The playground is just at the cool place.

As we waited in the shuttle bus line to head back the first night, an elementary school aged child (I am not great with guessing ages of kids who aren’t exactly my kids’ ages! He was between six and eleven?) asked his dad “Do we have to come back tomorrow?” and the dad immediately started listing foods served at the event as bribery. I have done this. When they struck a deal, the dad took a selfie and posted it to his stories. I couldn’t read what his caption was, but I bet you one epi-pen full of rosé it was “My favorite concert buddy.”

Then the bus arrived and the kid hugged his dad’s leg, full body, and the dad and I briefly locked eyes as the dad rumpled the kid’s hair. Without thinking I told him “I wish mine were here. He’s almost four.” I meant it.

PART THREE TOMORROW OUR FRIENDS HAVE ARRIVED AT OUR HOUSE WITH THEIR BABY