It Rains on the Oregon Coast

When you make the reservations, you think, “Orlando will be almost a year old by then,” and you think this means things will be different, and easier somehow. You think that being almost one meant means he will no longer be a baby.

Let’s all just take a moment and laugh about the naivete, shall we?

The reservations are for a little house in a small town on the Oregon Coast. Your husband loves the Oregon coast and you want to go for his birthday. You choose a town closer to you than your favorite town, because a FIVE hour drive is so much better than an eight hour drive.

Ah yes, the drive… The driving is actually okay, on the way down there… (yes, that was some foreshadowing, folks). You strap our baby in the car seat and hope for the best. You drive away from your house holding your breaths and then exhale two hours later, on a blanket in the grass at a rest stop. Wow. That wasn’t so bad! But you don’t want to gloat lest the gods of good luck get pissed and smite you down, so you just sorta sit there stupidly grinning and watching the passersby admire your toddling little son.

Back in the car. Breaths held. And then… nothing! Your baby falls asleep. FOR THREE MORE HOURS.

Again, with the stupid grins.

Finally, you arrive and find your little cabin by the sea.

Which turns out to be an utterly charmless studio apartment. With an uncomfortable bed.

The three of you try to sleep in the lumpy, small bed that is crammed into a little cubby in the wall, with your son nursing all night long (to make up for those five hours he missed out on while he was in the car).

The next day you hike down to the beach, eager to see sea anemones and the surf. You have a blanket and are stationed on the still-wet sand and your son scrabbles along and eats sand and rocks and you eat your sandwiches. You’re having fun!




That night Orlando cries and he doesn’t want to sleep. You spend another sleepless night in the claustrophobic bed and wake up to the pouring rain.

Pouring rain.

It’s July and pouring rain is what the Oregon Coast is known for. But you seem to have forgotten about this when you booked your tiny room and when you packed your bags. Pouring rain is fine when you can sit around curled up with a book in a comfortable place and eat out in restaurants and have some clothes that might protect you at least a little bit from the downpour…

Pouring rain is not so fine when you’re inside a tiny, dumpy apartment walking your son up and down the stairs for two days. Which is what you do until your son falls down and rug-burns the hell out of his nose and you say, “Let’s blow this joint and go home.”

You bail on the remainder of your reservation in the charmless studio apartment in the rainy town (and try not to think of the wasted money), and get in the car for Seattle, not realizing that it is Friday until you hit the wall of traffic in which you stay for AN ENDLESS ETERNITY.

But before the endless eternity, you and your husband crab at each other incessantly as you drive the windy roads leading to the interstate, with you trying to nurse your son while the both of you are strapped in, and suddenly the car is parked on the side of the road, your husband is stressed, you are sad, the baby is crying, and the rain has stopped.

You try to console the baby while you look at the back of your husband’s head and his hands on the steering wheel, and when you try to put the baby in the car seat, he shrieks and arches and before you know it, you’re outside the car, in a small, gravelly spot, holding the baby, feeling desperately alone and isolated.

You look around you at the green bushes, and then, holding the baby with one hand, you open the car door with the other hand, and you and your husband look at each other with the cry-smile, and he joins you there, in the small, gravelly spot, the circle of your family complete, with no one else driving by.

* * *

The facts of this story aren’t that terrible at all and I am not sure it would classify as a “horror” story. Reading it now, I realize there were quite a few ways in which we could have made better of it…

But the facts of the story aren’t really why I thought of this incident when I read Jenny’s prompt. It was simply that this was the first time in my parenting life when I felt completely trapped and simply wanted to run away. After we got home, I spent the next two days ignoring my husband and child with my nose in a book. I had no idea how desperately I had wanted to have a break, and I had no idea that bringing a baby on vacation with you meant that the BABY WAS WITH YOU ON YOUR VACATION.

Four years and one kid later, they are still here. And I keep trying my best not to run away.