The Dangerous Joy of Child-Free Vacations
I recently returned from a trip to Hawaii, where my partner and I spent eight days practically living out of a Jeep Wrangler, exploring an average of three new beaches a day, changing for dinner in parking lots, taking impromptu surfing lessons, and hiking everything from tropical rainforests to volcanoes. In short, experiencing that youthful, adventurous brand of freedom that becomes a true luxury when you cross the threshold of parenthood.
“You must miss your daughter so much,” said a woman sitting next to me at a luau in Maui one night, as I, fueled by a never-ending provision of open bar Mai Tais, started flipping through my camera roll to show her pictures of my toddler. Much to the bewilderment of this lovely newlywed with idyllic notions of motherhood, I had to pause to consider it. Of course, I missed my daughter, but not as much as I had anticipated. There was no dire need to see her, no incessant calls to my mother to check up on her, no stalking of the Nanit to watch her sleep. In fact, I had been enjoying myself so much that I had somehow managed to forget that I even had a child to begin with, and had instead snapped into a frivolous mode akin to that of my pre-baby days.
For transparency’s sake, this wasn’t the first time this had happened, or my first child-free trip, for that matter. The first one, a short work-related trip to St. Barth while I was still breastfeeding, had been accompanied by doubts and tears and countless FaceTime calls to my mother. (This is where I must add that the only reason any of this is possible is because of my amazing parents, who love nothing more than opening up sleepaway #CampBabushka to accommodate my *wanderlust*.) And yet, those four days had also felt like a deep exhale of a breath I had been unwittingly holding for almost a year – a chance to detach, to meet new people, to get out of the comfort zone I had become so tethered to. More trips followed, each one easier and more liberating than the next. (One notable moment involved dramatically abandoning my Spectra pump in a Parisian hotel room.) These days, I experience an acute craving for these jaunts every couple of months – to pack a suitcase with solely adult belongings, bid adieu to the grocery lists and kitchen cleanups, and spend a few days living solely for myself. To wake up at my own pace, to write, to have spontaneous sex, to talk about things other than preschools and business. To learn, to expand, to ideate. Paradoxically, the little person I created is often far from mind.
I confessed all of this to Dave on the way back from the luau. “It’s not that I don’t miss her – I just don’t think about her as much as I should,” I earnestly told him, fully expecting to be met with his usual empathy. What I got in return was a look that can be best described as “obtrusively judgmental.” He told me that he thinks about our daughter all the time, especially when he sees other children. “I want to travel with her, to have experiences and build memories together,” proclaimed our father of the year. Granted, what followed was a tirade in which I denounced his right to speak until he spends a day packing tiny socks and butt creams, and then changes a few consecutive poop diapers in the iron maiden torture device that is the airplane bathroom. I added that he didn’t understand how much I needed this, because having a baby had changed my life much more drastically than it had his. “You just have this fun new play buddy to run around with, and, meanwhile, my entire world has changed. All my time is now accounted for, and each free hour has a price tag.” To this, he told me that he no longer has any free time, because all of it belongs to us. “Honestly, you’re really stuck on this ‘pre-child me’ thing,” he added. “It’s like an obsession. I already forgot about my pre-child me. I’m over it. Just get over it.”
As much as I would like to delve into a rant about the gender inequalities of emotional labor, I have to admit that he brought up a valid point. Why is it that I still can’t stop clinging to my pre-baby identity, even though I’m two years into motherhood and live and breathe my child? Do I, perhaps, have some romanticized vision of how liberating it was to be single, even though most of my days were spent craving human touch and interaction? Or had it become so emblematic of my public character – the dating blog, the travels, the girl-nomad spirit consistently promoted through my writing – that it was hard to let go of? Even before Covid turned us all into hermits, I really did spend the bulk of my time in my apartment, working and swiping and occasionally sprucing up the monotony through jaunts to other cities and countries – exactly like I do now (minus the swiping, that is). Perhaps, it’s time to entertain the idea that having a child didn’t change me as much as I thought it had. In many ways, I’m still the same person I always have been – one who functions best with a stark juxtaposition of structure and freedom, who needs to occasionally disassociate from the logistics and connect with the vaster world, who has to leave her life to love it again.
I acknowledge that this is a rather nuanced revelation, and yet, it brought me relief to know that it’s not the pre-baby life that I’ve been chasing per se, but the occasional infusions of novelty that have always been directly linked with my happiness. It somehow felt less shameful, more manageable, more expansive. It left room for our child to soon enter our adventures. After all, the main reason I love to travel so much is because my parents took me everywhere with them since I was about seven years old, showing me a world far beyond the one I knew at home and helping me build a sense of perspective. While I’ll probably never be the mother lugging her baby around Southeast Asia in an Artipoppe carrier, I certainly hope to be able to introduce my daughter to the world the moment she is old enough to appreciate it.
The good news is, I still have a few years to tap into my inner globe-trotting supermom. In the meantime, we’re going #CampBabushka all the way.