Dad on a Lark, Stay-at-Home Dad, Blog: 8.20.2008

Dad on a Lark

A blog by Rand Richards Cooper, on parenting baby Larkin

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August 20, 2008

Parallel Vacationing

more in dad on a lark:

8.6.08 : Families by the Numbers

7.23.08 : The Universe in a Lost Red Binky

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Last year, when Larkin was one and a half, I described the trials of our summer trip and our piteous hope that "next summer, it's going to be a lot easier, right? Right?"

Wrong!

This summer Molly and I rented a cottage north of Boston for a week, with two friends and their fifteen-month-old daughter, Hazel. Things started backfiring right away, beginning with the weather, a daily forecast that could have been described as "typhoons, alternating with tiny interludes of sunshine." As for the cottage, it had a great deck, a view of the water, and a floor plan that maximized openness and light. Everything I always would have wanted in a getaway cottage, in other words. But when two couples vacation with kids, your criteria change. That airy openness, for instance – there were no doors between rooms, save for the bathrooms – meant there was no way to soundproof against a someone shouting at sunrise, "I'm ready for BREAKFAST!"

And that would be Larkin. Hazel, it turned out, routinely sleeps till 8, as do her parents, while Lark is raring to go at dawn. Short of muzzling her, there was no way to keep her from waking our friends. And their idea of a relaxing vacation definitely did not include getting up two hours earlier than usual. So... Molly and I ended up taking Larkin out. Each day we'd drive to a different town and walk around, stopping for coffee to escape the gusts of rain, marking time until 8 a.m. rolled around and we could head back.

The basic problem was a faulty idea of mine. When we and our friends had planned the trip, I'd imagined that throwing our two daughters together would simplify things. That somehow we'd all be sharing the chaos, and that sharing it would make it less...chaotic. Wrong! It turned out that Hazel and Larkin were on different schedules not just in the morning, but at meal and naptime as well. So instead of the happy synergy I'd imagined, the girls mostly did parallel play. And the four of us followed along: two couples, engaged in a week of parallel vacationing. Only after both girls were asleep, which often wasn't until 8:30, did the four of us get to have what I used to think of as the essence of vacationing with friends: adult conversation over an adult beverage. And by then we were all too tired to enjoy it much.

Parallel vacationing also reflects the tendency of each couple to fixate on its own child while overlooking the other. This discrepancy is hard to admit without sounding churlish, but it's real. Politeness and the diplomacy of friendship can minimize it; still, the fact remains that attentiveness to another child's cuteness/intelligence/charm requires effort. How fascinating your own child is, and how uninvolving someone else's is in comparison! You dislike yourself for thinking this way, but at some level you do. I think of it as a primal thing, a tribal thing. You want the whole world to understand how precious your child is.

And objectively, there were numerous ways in which Larkin was anything but precious over the course of the week. Which brings me to the biggest problem with our cottage: knick-knacks. The place was crammed with stuff. Decorative stuff, stuff that announced "I have no function except to be destroyed by a toddler." A pewter container of oversized wooden matches. A rolling beverage caddy. A wooden mallard whose eyes, alas, proved detachable. Bizarrely low-hanging portraits. And, worst of all, figurines. I now understand that the most important question parents of a 2 1/2 year old should ask before renting a house is, "Are there figurines?" As our friends politely refrained from comment, Larkin rampaged, an orgy of breaking, spilling, hiding, smearing, throwing, and dumping. "You know what my dream vacation place would look like?" I ranted to Molly. "An enormous, empty, undamageable room!"

I don't mean to gainsay the sweet and funny moments we enjoyed on our trip. Like walking the beach with Larkin as she collected a bucket of shells, racing toward each new find with a yelp of delight. Or the nonsense games we invented, like Tickle Takes Your Hippo (too arcane to explain here). Or the hilarious remarks she burst out with. Standing in front of a colonial-era house, she looked up and exclaimed, "What a gorgeous, gorgeous house!" In the car one day she sneezed six times in a row, sniffled and rubbed her nose (she seems to have inherited Molly's allergies) — then grabbed her own head in both hands and started twisting it this way and that, while dementedly smiling and announcing "I wish I could pull my head off!" I almost had to pull over and stop the car, I was laughing so hard.

But in the end, we were worn down by the ceaseless vigilance a toddler requires. You can never relax. And the constant need to say No becomes demoralizing. No, you can't play with the cuckoo clock. No, please don't eat that book. No, that's not a toy. No no no no no...Eventually saying No becomes automatic. You don't even know why you're doing it, except that that's who you are – a parent, the person who says no. It wears you down. You become so, well, negative. You feel mean.

Molly and I felt mean, at any rate, especially alongisde with our friends. Hazel at this juncture is a blissed-out infant who is just learning to walk, and you can pretty much park her with her toys and sit back on the couch. But Larkin demanded constant policing. This made us feel, in comparison with our friends, alternately too harsh and too lax, too frustrated, too hysterical. And, finally, we couldn't help feeling guilty that they had to cope with this whirlwind of energy and noise who is our daughter. They were gracious about it, but Molly and I left wondering whether the week would go down in their memory as the trip from hell. We're a little afraid to ask.

Editor's Note:
You can also read Rand's blog on Family.com, a sister site to Wondertime.com where you can post comments and connect with other Rand fans, and Rand will be able to be part of the conversation as well.

Rand Richards Cooper is the travel correspondent for Bon Appétit, and is author of a novel, The Last to Go, and a collection of stories, Big as Life.