The Man in Nantucket
“There’s a baby in there?”
The unknown-to-me toddler is already climbing on our picnic table as she asks again.
“There’s a baby in there, right?”
I am standing at a beachfront taco truck rocking Jane in her car seat to mimic motion as she moans. Megan has taken off in search of a bathroom for Marta, and Jane is sick for the first time and is as completely overwhelmed with travel and illness as an infant can be.
The toddler is quick as she climbs the picnic table and her hands are on the edge of the car seat to peek in on its contents
“That’s a baby,” she tells me with a point and a nod.
We have been on vacation for almost a week and, outside of being fortunate enough to be able to take a trip, everything that can go wrong has gone wrong. Our journey up was waylaid by a visit to urgent care for our toddler, our mini-van broke down doubling our journey to Cape Cod’s length, the bikes we rented broke, credit cards have been lost, and our van survived the ferry to Nantucket but then immediately got a flat tire (how do you order a tire to an island?). All of these hiccups slowly building in annoyance but were then dwarfed by Jane, our infant, contracting a very nasty cold.
Did I mention we might be in the path of a hurricane?
If there is proof that karma is real, a sick “Sweet Baby Jane” and our attempts to comfort her are the embodiment of it. It sounds banal, but she is such a good baby. I joke whenever this is pointed out, “that you never get a baby like this the first time around,” otherwise it just wouldn’t be fair.
Even sick-as-could-be Jane doesn’t really cry, she just moans. All of the cooing and vocalization that you are so ecstatic to hear for the first time has been replaced with her single-octave moan. In between her comfort feeding, we have spent the vacation taking turns walking her around with our face pressed against hers as she moans, quietly wishing we could just will the sickness out of our sweet baby, and that any of our physical soothings can register on our little girl who has been so mercifully good to us in her short life thus far.
Today’s plans were thrown off from the start with how sick and still unrecovered Jane was from a night of intermittent sleep. Marta added to it with waking up particularly early, even for my normal dawn-riser, and slamming into an “overtired” wall before noon time. Megan and I had planned on going to the nearest beach eight minutes away from where we were staying, but as the day rolled on the plan seemed to drift out of reach.
But by noon we had wrangled the girls into the car. Jane fell asleep near instantly when she hits her carrier (this is the best baby), and Marta shrieked against her harness but fell asleep soon after to the Frozen soundtrack and the lull of automobile motion. We drove south to the beach, looking at the surf from the parking lot, and I suggested to Megan that if both of them are asleep we should just “keep driving” …right at the moment that “Bumpa” (Marta’s honorific for her Granddad) called to say that the derailer on his rental bike has bent into his spokes and that he needs a rescue.
From there, our beach day turns into an hours-long nap tour of the island. We find Bumpa and load him and the bicycle in the back and deliver him back to the rental shop. We drive North from there, as far as we can go, to Wauwinet where you need a Nantucket Oversand Permit (a point of pride for the locals I have found out) to go any further. We head south past the Sesachacha Pond and Sankaty head lighthouse and loop across the eastern corner of the island as we pass any body of water or sight-worth-seeing that we imagine that on a different vacation, with a different “crew”, we could get out of this car and walk a cliffside bluff trail or the steps up to an isolated lighthouse on an undeveloped isthmus.
We circle back to the beach we started at, girls still sleeping, and Megan and I negotiate that the best way to salvage the day is for her to get out and procure the tacos at the taco truck, and I to stay behind and wait in the running van with the “precious cargo”.
This is a good plan, we both agree with a nod, and Megan departs.
Marta was not on board, as once Megan’s door was closed, she awoke with a “Where’s mommy going??” and I, to avoid this line of questions inevitably progressing to histrionics, quickly shut the car off, unload Marta and her sister and pursue Megan to the Taco Truck.
Marta must have sensed that there was no bathroom in eyesight as once we caught Mommy she let us know that nature was calling and Megan scooped Marta up, marched off in the pursuit of an unknown bathroom, and left me with Jane, in a car carrier, at a picnic table, at the beach.
And Jane keeps moaning.
“Can I see the baby?” Her toddler's hands are already reaching up and over Jane’s muslin swaddle, when two more kids approach. Big Sister, I guessed by appearance, immediately “seatbelts” her arms around her younger sister’s waist and tries to drag her off the bench while still peeking in the carrier herself and Big Brother comes up close behind followed by…
“I am sorry, I am so sorry, I am sorry, MONA DON’T TOUCH HER, I am so sorry they are obsessed with babies…”
“I’m guessing these three are yours?” As an instinct, I try to assuage the concern of a fellow worried parent, and after a day of uphill battles, could spot another brother(sister)-in-arms.
I lower the carrier to the ground so the three could have a look, I give Mom the courtesy warning that Jane is sick, so as much as Mona wants to touch “the baby”, I wouldn’t recommend it for her own sake. The two older siblings, after a brief acknowledgment, lose interest and wander back to their tacos, but Mona kneels in the sand next to the carrier and folds her arms on the edge to settle in watching Jane.
This is fine. I try to engage with Mona a little bit and tell her that I have a little girl named Marta who I think is her age too who might want to play with her. I guessed wrong on the age, I find out as Mona is two, and although the same size as Marta, a full year younger.
Mona’s mother though correctly identifies Jane as being four months old as we launch into the familiar conversation that all parents have with strangers navigating the same period of life as they are. I compliment her three children and Mona for being so good with babies smaller than her, and she tells me that she feels crazy sometimes with three and that her husband is one of seven but wanted to stop at “only” one after their son was born. The two have a “very special relationship”, but good thing they had more because Big Sister is Mona’s keeper and keeps her mother mercifully sane dealing with Mona.
I tell her that I am one of six, but it’s funny how it works as all I have ever wanted was a big family and that I think it’s because my siblings were so close in age that my childhood memories are just dominated by the feeling of being part of a unit with them no matter the circumstances. She said she felt the same growing up as one of four all born within six years.
I try to engage with Mona again, as I spot Marta and Megan returning from their bathroom journey, but she can’t be distracted from baby Jane.
“Are you going to have more children?”
I’m surprised by the forwardness, but I respond with my stock answer (that drives Megan bonkers).
“I am having as many as I can get.”
“We actually have four children you know, our youngest son came after Mona but died during birth. It would have been exactly four kids in six years…” Her eyes flinch as she tells me this and she trails off.
It’s rare I don’t know what to say.
“I’m sorry, I uh”
“… I just don’t know what to do with her, she asks me constantly if the ‘baby is in there?’” Gesturing to Mona then pointing to her stomach.
I can’t recall the rest of the conversation and how we transitioned into Megan and Marta’s arrival. Mona and Marta took a momentary interest in each other before her mother wrapped her up and extracted her from Jane and our picnic table.
She thanked me repeatedly as she made her exit.
Gobsmacked, we ate tacos. We trekked back to our house on the marsh and formed a plan with Gigi and Bumpa to, if the kids are up for it, attempt the island brewery this evening for an early dinner. Marta, rejuvenated from her nap, danced to the live band and waved to all of the dogs on leashes, with most of the owners playing along and waving their dog’s paws back at her.
Jane slept the entire time in her Bumpa and Gigi’s arms as Megan and I enjoyed a beer from the brewery. Poor sick Jane started stirring at closing time, and I transitioned her from pressed against my face for comfort, to back in her carrier.
As we made our exit, Megan in front of me with an exhausted Marta on her hip, me trailing behind in the parking lot with Jane in her carrier in one arm, counterbalanced by a 12-pack of craft beer in the other, an open-top Jeep driven by a middle-aged Nantucket vacationer with a look of early-in-life success pulls up to me.
“HEY!”
I perk up, hyper-alert to any infraction or danger while carrying a baby through the crowded parking lot of a brewery at last call.
“HEY, I NEED TO TELL YOU SOMETHING.”
I flashed an unguarded smile and offer back an eyebrow raised, “Oh yeah?”
He inches closer in his Jeep and works his gaze from Megan, to Marta, to me, and the load I’m carrying.
“YEAH. I JUST NEED TO TELL YOU I’M LOOKING AT THE LUCKIEST MAN IN NANTUCKET.”
And with a concerning lurch back in his seat he sped off.