The night we got to Maine, I slept on a love seat.
Not a couch. A love seat.
And it was small for a love seat.
I had become a human garlic knot, bent as though I were undergoing some kind of sadistic yogic training in the Himalayas. Too tired to find another option but too uncomfortable to fall asleep, I asked myself the question most parents of young kids have probably asked themselves:
Is this really my life right now?
It’s a rhetorical question. Because of course it is.
Traveling with an almost-five-year-old and an almost-two-year-old is a lot like transporting two leaky barrels of volatile chemicals across state lines. You handle them carefully, keep them away from open flames, and make sure not to leave them in the sun for too long.
Hours before I dipped my toe into amateur contortionism, our little drums of gasoline were having a wonderful time. We went on a hike through the woods, and using a stroller, shoulder-rides, and trickery, they both made it the whole way without having a meltdown. Sue and I said to each other, out loud, “Boy, they are gonna sleep well tonight!”
Then, the narrator doing the voiceover of our lives said, flatly, “They wouldn’t.”
The “one bedroom” we’d booked turned out to be one room, with a bed on one side. A bed that was supposed to be a queen, but there’s no way it was a queen. It was a princess, at best. Everything else was on the other side of our one-bed room, with glass doors that wouldn’t even close all the way in between. There were no window shades, and one AC unit on the wrong side of the glass doors. Which, it turned out, were excellent at insulating the bed from the AC.
There was also a table that looked an awful lot like a person’s butthole. That part isn’t important, but I’m putting it in here anyway.
On arrival, we launched into an accelerated bedtime procedure. Sue shoveled toast into the kids’ faces with one hand while pulling on pjs with another. I frantically taped garbage bags onto the windows while trying to keep them open enough to allow some airflow. We delivered abbreviated bedtime stories, sang uptempo versions of goodnight songs, and silently prayed that we hadn’t crossed the threshold into the badlands of overtired.
But it was too late.
We spent the next three hours in a spiraling descent beyond those badlands and into a morass of delirium. There was a lot of crying, maniacal laughter, and words uttered that can’t be repeated here.
The only corner hidden from view of the bed area happened to be right in front of the air conditioner, so we took turns eating dinner shivering in an arctic nook while the other one worked on the kids.
Gus finally settled down for about 90 seconds at around 8:15 PM. Then, as if to greet our sigh of relief, a breeze came through the window. It was too soft to relieve the humidity, but strong enough to catch the trash bag curtain like a hideous sail. The bag drifted gently to the floor, and, to my horror, Gus’ silhouette arose before the floodlight of the setting sun, resurrected like a reverse vampire.
In the end, Sue resorted to lying down inside the 2×3′ Pack and Play with Gus, and I passed out on the fun size love seat. I came to with my eyes glued shut, (I’d fallen asleep in my contacts,) and feeling like every one of my vertebrae was in a fight with its neighbors. The place looked like we’d thrown a rager for 17 year olds, except instead of beer cans and cigarette butts littering the floor there were board books and crumpled pouches.
Day two, we found a pollinator meadow near the house, and for about ten minutes it was like we were the Von Trapp family skipping through an alpine wonderland. There were literally goddamn butterflies. The kids scampered ahead of us, giggling, the dog was prancing, and Sue and I looked at each other welling with gratitude. We were doing it.
The kids ran up onto a tiny bridge, and laughed and jumped and just enjoyed the hell out of that bridge. To avoid having them fuse to my corneas, I had taken my contacts out that morning, which lent a fuzzy, dreamlike quality to the cinematic trope in front of me.
Then I noticed a brown shape on the bridge.
“Huh.” I thought. A cardboard box?
Yes, indeed. And it looked like something was written on it.
My blood froze when the letters came into focus:
Wasp Nest.
I started sprinting. Someone had changed the channel from The Sound of Music to Mission: Impossible. I grabbed a child in each arm, yelling (internally) “RUN!”
I was not actually yelling anything. I had forgotten all about Sue, who was behind us, wondering what was happening, right up until she got stung twice on the ankle. She had, more or less, been shot. So then I actually did say “Run,” and pulled a wasp out of her dress with one hand while holding a screaming Gus in the other, helping the dog with my foot, dragging Mae along, and doing the math on how far wasps will chase you.
And the rest of the trip followed the same cadence. Mae discovering her first sea urchin in a tide pool. Gus face planting into an adjacent tide pool seconds later. Watching the kids play hide and seek in an old fort from the War of 1812. Ordering 1 (one) lobster roll and then being told “that will be $38,” only to receive enough food for a snack.
Then, between the summits and trenches, was a muddled river of ordinary moments. This was one of my favorites:
I love the way their little blonde heads are almost touching but not quite. I love that you can see the tadpoles they’re admiring if you look closely. I love the fact that they were both sitting perfectly still for a whole 20 seconds, fully engrossed in the world of a pond. Just like I was 35 years ago.
And I took it with my phone. In the rush to get our inflammable cargo out the door, I forgot to pack a memory card, so my fancy camera bag might as well have been filled with sand.
Without my camera, it was easier to take off the photographer hat and just be a dad. I wasn’t so locked into wanting the kids to face a certain way or stay in a spot of light. I still took photos, but it was more about recording what I was observing than crafting an image.
More on putting the camera down: Chaos, Clarity, and What Really Matters. Another descent into the badlands of overtired: Norovirus, and the Silly Face That Changed Everything.
As we packed up the car to head home, I checked under the cushions of the love seat to make sure nothing important or perishable was left there. There was a small handle.
The love seat was a bed the whole time.
