Travels With Baby You Haven’t Really Experienced Parenthood Until You’ve Taken A Trip With The Little One

It was our last night in Hawaii, and we were enjoying the evening sunset. Pina colada in hand, my husband and I sat on a grassy spot in front of the beach, leaning back against a palm tree, his arm wrapped around me. A gentle breeze filled the air with intoxicating floral fragrances, and the sunset cast a magical, brilliant glow over our world below.

“This is indescribable,” he said.

“Thoroughly,” I responded. “Thoroughly indescribable.”

Because, for one thing, as this romantic, scene-from-a-movie was taking place, baby Jack was simultaneously using my legs as a jungle-gym. Tugging at my shorts and shirt sleeves. Pulling up whole sections of lawn. Looking for really dirty things to put in his mouth. All the while, happily chirping, “Ma? Da? Mama! Da!”

It was a moment of sudden insight, and I’m not referring to the fact that it had just become abundantly clear that he needed an immediate diaper change.

It had also become clear that parenting knows no vacations.

In fact, forget what I’ve said before about morning sickness, labor and delivery, diaper rash, teething and sleepless nights. The point is, you aren’t really a parent, until you’ve taken your first parent-child vacation.

And the first real parent-child trip is the one during which your little darling insists upon pushing the broom he’s found behind the valet’s counter in front of the nice, expensive hotel where you are blowing all your savings, and you allow him to push the darn broom, because it is making him so rollicking happy, and because it seems harmless.

But then, when he starts ramming the broom into the nice, expensive shoes of the nice hotel guests who, by the way, don’t seem like the sort of people who have a stash of peanut butter and jelly up in their rooms, or who schlep a week’s supply of juice boxes wherever they go, when he starts ramming their shoes while they’re waiting for their cars, you decide, perhaps, it’s time to draw a line.

“Sweetheart, let’s put the nice broom away now so we can go find daddy …”

“AARRGHHH!!”

“Okay. Mommy is going to take the nice broom, and put …”

“EEEEEEEE!!!”

“The broom has to go bye-bye so that …”

“NNOOOOOO!!!”

“Bye-bye Mr. Nice Broom, we have to …”

What’s more, you aren’t really a parent, until you’re in the lobby of the aforementioned hotel, and your child performs a PDNM, or Public Display Nuclear Meltdown.

It was fascinating. It was spirited. It was even potentially profitable. Tourists gathered around as if this were just one more aspect of the island’s rich cultural life:

Hawaii’s new “Half-pint, Hardheaded Hula.”

And finally, you aren’t really a parent until your young child manages, somehow, to climb up onto the miniature stage at a local restaurant where you are dining, in pursuit of all those interesting knobs on the band’s amplifying equipment, and you leap like a wide receiver in order to grab him fast, providing the evening’s most amusing entertainment.

So much for sleeping in. So much for midnight walks along the beach. So much for elegant dinners out. Vacations will never be quite the same.

In fact, they’ll be better.

Because the odd truth of the matter is, I’ve never had so much fun. I’ve never laughed so hard as when Jack walked around the pool area greeting sunbathers with his two favorite words: “Hi!” and “Moo!”

Or when he chased his beach ball, tried to do a hula-dance, heard pounding drums at a luau and had his first taste of papaya.

And never have I laughed so much at Life as I did during our last evening in Hawaii, my husband and I snuggled together on a grassy patch under a tree, gazing wondrously at this spectacular sunset, Jack busy unlacing our shoes…