I’ve just come back from three days skiing in Switzerland with my husband. It’s the first time in the nine months since her birth that we’ve shipped our daughter off to her grandparents for three consecutive overnights. There are, of course, myriad privileges that made this feasible: a baby who is (currently, hopefully evermore) sociable and seemingly unbothered by environmental change; a baby yet to pick a favorite parent (for soothing, for feeding); eager, willing, and available grandparents.
From the outset, I was wary. Was she too young for this? Was I too attached? Were we both secretly her favorite parent, meaning without us she’d scream the bungalow down, refuse her bottle, refuse her bed? Would I sit bolt upright on the plane, suddenly acutely agonized, ridden with regret like Kevin’s mother in Home Alone? Would the ache of missing her overshadow the piste and the après ski?
In reality, after touching down in crisp St. Moritz, the most striking feeling was that of benign calm. There was a faint tug, a distant pull—like the whiff of diaper pail to which I’ve become so accustomed. My daughter was out there, somewhere, without me, but rather than feeling like an urgent call to arms, it just felt like a fact. I didn’t fear that something was going wrong, that her safety was compromised, that my (and my husband’s) presence was the only presence she needed to survive, to thrive.
The expectation of feelings about our separation didn’t match the actual feeling on the tarmac, it didn’t arrive with me at the hotel. I love her, I do, but I didn’t miss her. I love her and I simply was not with her.
Culture at large tells me I should have felt differently. I should have felt the kind of longing you see in Oscar-baiting performances; a kind of missing-a-limb numbness. I should feel bad… right? Or less content. Or less free. I waited for the heartache, the guilt, the separation anxiety. I waited to feel selfish. It didn’t come.
From her grandparents, I was expecting all the questions I had to ask myself when the baby first came home—Was she okay? Was this normal breathing? Was this enough milk?—but they absorbed the impact of a newborn like crash test dummies who had four kids 30 years ago and are extremely familiar with the ropes. Unlike me, they don’t mind noisy toys, so the baby went all-in on spinning tops that played the “Macarena,” a miniature pianoforte, and several small vehicles with screaming sirens. As I hit the slopes, she’d joined Stomp.
Once the baby-preoccupation dissipated, I was swift in gratifying my own needs—which sounds selfish, but really didn’t feel it. The hyper-focus of engaged parenting gave way to a mind unburdened by the immediacy of a teething twinge, a wet diaper, an about-to-be-banged head. In Switzerland, my mind felt free.
I dealt with myself rather than the baby and then myself. I ate when I was hungry. I slept when I was tired. I could doze through a three-martini morning. I could go to the loo alone, which seemed genuinely magical. I saw my husband’s face unlit by baby monitor. I attended Pilates with gusto, leaving with abs humming and legs forced into the meander of an oxbow lake. I fondued until I was roughly the size of a barge. I thought about Jil Sander again (still can’t afford it). I could pay attention to who wore who at the Oscars.
The feeling was not that of revenge, of reclaiming time now that I was freed from responsibility. I was not pretending not to be a parent, nor trying to be fun to prove I still could be. I felt, in general, the same, only the baby was content on another continent. Honestly, it surprised me—the ease of just being. I didn’t have “feeling completely satisfied” on my “baby’s first weekend away” bingo card.
