Three Kids and a Wrong Hotel Room

So we’ve been doing this for nine years. It was supposed to be no big deal. I’ve done this without kids, while pregnant, with one kid, with two kids, with two kids while pregnant. It’s the perfect sunset to the sticky, sun-drenched summer. My littles talk about it all year. It’s comfortable; it’s a time of peace and restoration. A simultaneous farewell and a welcome.

We always go to the same hotel in Vermont over Labor Day–well, actually there were two years we went different times of year, but they never involved the little people. This year was met with the same glee-filled anticipation. We were prepared for this trip. I was prepared for this trip. I knew what to expect. I had a plan. My husband was in on the plan. The kids knew the plan (well, the 5 year old was in on it, the two year old probably had his own plan involving dinosaurs and diggers, and the 10 month old…he’s 10 months old. My plan is his plan.). We had my in laws with us; they knew the plan. The hotel knew our plan.

We pulled into the circular drive of our hotel, and my husband went to check us in. It was sunny. But not humid. The first indications that fall was about to knock on our door. Other than the kids’ desperate pleas to get out of the car and get to the playground, all was moving forward nicely. Just as I had envisioned.

We finally crawled out of the car, stretched, and made the same walk we’ve been making for years. We found the same elevator and pressed the same buttons. Up floor four and then to our two specially chosen rooms. We’ve been here enough times to know the exact rooms we want. They’re big (a necessity when you still need two cribs and a refrigerator brought up by housekeeping); they’re connected to our in law’s room (another necessity when you need a staging area to put kids to bed who have three different bed times); and, perhaps most importantly, the rooms overlook the outdoor bar and fire pit where our monitor still has perfect reception. If anyone has been trapped in a hotel room after a child’s bedtime, you understand that this is of the utmost importance. The wine doesn’t hurt either.

My husband took out the key card, swiped it, and…nothing. A red light. They must not have activated the card I thought. An inconvenience, but not the end of the world. So back down to the lobby my husband went. And then I heard it: there were voices. From inside our room. I frantically texted him. I had been wrong: the hotel, apparently, did not know our plan.

With my stomach swirling, my head exploded with thoughts of being stuck at 6:30 pm huddled in a damp bathroom until the work of putting each child to bed separately had passed. And my hands went numb with the thought of dealing with that final, dreaded, bedtime of the five year old who begs me to stay with her until she falls asleep. Every. Single. Night. Even at home in her own bed. I whipped out my phone, “Fix this!” I yelled to my husband. I begged him. And his response was, “There’s nothing they can do. We’ll make the best of it.”

THE BEST OF IT?!?!? This from a person who would not be stuck in the bathroom, who would not be sitting in a dark room, desperately trying to fight off the sleep that I would eventually blame on dry contacts. I was angry. I wanted him to be angry too. I wanted to feel validated in my anger, but all I got was a measly, “We’ll make the best of it.” I don’t think he understood how tragically far from my expectations I now expected “the best” to be.

The cribs came. I squeezed them in. The fridge came. I squeezed it in. We unpacked, a physical acceptance of the situation. I was still angry. My in laws left their door open. We left our door open. There was only one other room on this floor (the room between us, the
connecting room). The kids happily skipped back and forth. I looked out the window. The fire pit was still there. Still burning. I turned around. My two year old wanted to be put into his “bed.” He wanted the 10 month old in with him. He wanted the baby’s food. And they giggled. And ate together. And they giggled some more. He doesn’t usually like the baby. But there they were giggling. I had never expected he’d figure out how much he liked his little brother while trapped behind the bars of a small hotel crib. And that’s when it started to go away.

They never knew there was a problem. To them, it was as perfect as it needed to be. Their expectations weren’t of perfect rooms or carefully controlled plans, but of being with their mommy and daddy without exception and exploring their own little freedoms. Instead of trapping them in my in law’s room during bedtime, maybe they needed to have more of those freedoms. The day, the hotel, the rooms were perfect to them, and so it needed to be perfect for me…just the way it was.

And when I let my plan, my vision, go, it was. As I put the littles to bed that night, one by one, my husband took the others to the deck, to see the fire pit, to roll on the lawn, to be kids in the final dusks of summer. They made smores. After the baby fell asleep, I came out to get the middle little and watched him follow his sister with awe as she made new friends and played ball. He desperately wanted to keep up and be as big as her. After he was in bed, I came out and watched my big girl, about to go into Kindergarten, do cartwheels in the moonlight, listened as she told me the facts she knew about the moon and space before scurrying off to do “just one more” cartwheel with her new friend. Then I put her to bed, and she fell asleep before I finished folding the covers over the frame of a little girl who was now not as little as she is in all the memories I have of her in that place, most of which were not the result of a plan gone right or an expectation fulfilled, but of accidents, chaos, and veering off path.