Traveling without kids
When our son, Rowan, was six months old, we flew with him to Las Vegas and hit the casinos. Just kidding. We spent one night in Las Vegas and ordered room service at 7 pm while Rowan slept in the bathroom. We watched Shark Tank for an hour before passing out. It had been an exhausting day, our nerves fried from flying with a baby for the first time.
Luckily the trip had been easy, mostly because we were surrounded by a bachelorette party from New Jersey flying to Vegas for the weekend. They had fawned over Rowan, and he fed off their energy. After one night in Vegas, we roadtripped around Utah and Arizona for a couple of weeks. The flight home wasn’t as easy as the flight there. There were many poops, very few naps, and a couple of big meltdowns.
As I think many new parents do, I spent the weeks leading up to our trip reading through tips on how to travel with a baby. Feed the baby during takeoff and landing. Bring many changes of clothes on the plane. Bring extra formula just in case. Buy these blackout covers for the pack-n-play. Get this travel stroller. Put a hat over your baby’s eyes to help them fall asleep in the carrier. (This is my favorite tip.)
My husband and I are on our way back home from a week-long trip we took to France without Rowan, courtesy of my generous parents who cared for him while we were away. It’s the first time we’ve both been away from Rowan at the same time. Flying across the Atlantic felt impossibly easy, almost relaxing. No need for research or new travel gear.
Ned and I spent the first four days of our trip in Paris. We slept until 10:30, stopped to eat at little cafes, went into shops with wavy candlesticks, striped shirts, bricks of nougat, taxidermied owls and goats and exotic butterflies pinned into frames. We applied sunscreen and reapplied sunscreen and walked under the hot June sun, through the Tuileries and across the Seine. We then went to our friends’ wedding at a chateau in Provence, clinked champagne glasses, played cornhole, swam in the cold pool, and walked around the vineyard.
It was all very lovely. I felt a bit like a balloon being tugged along in someone’s hand, jerked not unpleasantly from place to place, enjoying the scenery before going along to the next stage of the vacation.
In Provence, we stayed at the chateau where our friends were getting married. Our other close friends and their two-and-a-half-year-old son were staying there, too. On the first evening, we were all waiting for a shuttle to pick us up and take us to the welcome drinks. I had on my high heels and slumped into a comfortable chair on the lawn. Our friends’ son came up to me, and I plopped him onto my lap. I relaxed immediately. The weight of his little body made me come down from the floaty balloon feeling that had accompanied me the whole trip. It felt familiar, and I immediately said something to the effect of, “Oh, I’ve missed this so much.” I gave him a hug, ran my fingers over his white-blond hair, watched him gaze across the lawn before he hopped off my lap and moved onto the next thing.
Ned had a similar experience later in the week, when the three-year-old daughter of another wedding guest sat in his lap and inspected his facial hair and asked how much he washed his beard. “I just want to hold her again,” Ned said a while later. We both frowned and said how much we missed Rowan.
Before I became a mother, vacations were for reaching stasis in my own body. I would rest, eat, move, and be outside long enough that I would eventually feel excellent, having shed stress from work or the tedium of daily life.
Now, there’s another little body floating around out there that’s also mine, in a way. I felt good in my own body on our vacation, but also like I was missing some ribs, or maybe a toe that you don’t realize is so essential to walking until you’re without it. By the end of our trip, I was almost jealous of parents with babies strapped to their bodies as they rushed through the train station or tending to toddlers in strollers as they had meltdowns in line for the Louvre. What I wouldn’t do to be weighed down by Rowan, his ample cheeks so close to mine, ready to be kissed and nuzzled, his warm little hands grasping at my necklace or placed on my shoulder.
I find it so helpful to remember that parenthood is a constant push-pull, an ever-shifting paradox. Being a mother feels extremely heavy sometimes. The sense of responsibility can be crushing. But I didn’t realize until this vacation how comforting the weight of parenthood can feel, too. I feel weighed down by Rowan when I sit with him in my lap, when I carry him up the stairs and feel my quads straining, when I lay on the living room floor as he sits nearby and sorts through his toys. His little body is a weight that I know so well, having carried him in my belly, and now having helped him grow for the past ten months. It’s a weight that helps me remember who I have become since he was born and who I want to be as he keeps growing. It’s a weight that keeps me firmly planted on earth and sends me even farther down, as if parenthood were a portal into deep springs of love that are always underfoot.
Ned and I are committed to going away with each other, no kids, at least once a year. This first trip was the best thing for our relationship. It helped me remember that Ned is my favorite person to hang out with and what our life was like before we had Rowan. And now we do have Rowan. And we can’t wait to go home to him.