Ye Olde Bell

I felt so guilty packing. Nauseated driving to the airport. We were taking Ollie to England with us, and leaving Cass at home.

I had to go to the Olde Bell Inn for work. The assignment: eat, sleep and relax in the beautiful old inn, dating back to 1135, for three days and write about it. In the English countryside. With a design makeover by my fantasy career idol, Ilse Crawford. Local meat, cheese, chairs—that’s their big hook. In the English countryside.

But we know our limits. We wouldn’t get within spit-up distance of the eat-sleep-relax trifecta with a can’t-sit-down three-year-old and a can’t-walk nine-month-old in tow. So after various permutations and venn diagrams charting family dynamics and basic survival needs, we settled on the only possible outcome: Cass would stay with his grandparents, who would shower him with undivided attention, a stream of cookies and juice and a non-stop schedule of thrilling activities he’d love but that, well, we’d love a little less (have you ever been to Frankenmuth?). After all, Ollie still depends on me for the majority of his sustenance, and Ryan’s presence would ensure that I could concentrate on my work. It was all very tidy and methodical.

We knew Ollie would be easier than the baby version of Cass—and not just because of his easy-breezy disposition (although, admittedly, that too). We are also significantly less stressed about babies in general these days. When we boarded airplanes with Cass as a baby, we saw menacing stares and whispering passengers—people who looked at with disgust and dread. Such idiotic, disrespectful parents who would travel with a, gasp!, baby. This trip, those perceived smirks and grimaces were replaced with knowing smiles, nostalgic nods and dancing lollipops. In every passenger we saw kind souls who couldn’t wait to pinch cheeks, old ladies ready to knit booties. Even the security guard stopped us at the checkpoint, so he could tickle Ollie’s chubby feet. Perception changes everything.

The rest of the trip was equally stress-free. We didn’t worry about naps and bedtimes: He’d sleep when he was tired. We took him for long walks on cobblestone streets, along the Thames and through old crumbling towns and spooky graveyards. Breakfast and lunch every day down in the delicious restaurant (lamb shank! pork belly! jam and tea!), holding him at the table while he lapped up the double-duty attention he so rarely gets. We gave him a bath in the giant clawfoot tub in the middle of the room. And held him at the big windows overlooking the moor so he could watch the swans glide across the River Thames. Every afternoon, after he slept a bit—either in the room or in the Ergo on Ryan’s back —we took him down to the pub, where we ordered a pint and played scrabble—and made it through the entire cut-throat game with no high-pitched interruptions. The bartender loved him, everyone knew his name.

I don’t think either of us anticipated that the best part of this vacation work trip would be spending two-on-one time with our little baby, who is growing so fast and hardly ever gets held without one of his parent’s two hands occupied by something else. Whenever [I thought] I caught folks looking at us from across the pub or down the aisle of our plane, as we doted on Ollie like all-consumed first-time parents in crazy love, I felt compelled to interrupt the reverie: “We have another one at home. He’s having a blast with his grandparents.” And he was.