HERDING
goofballs
CHECKING IN Josh Farnsworth Guest Columnist
1. The lights of downtown Montreal. 2. A glamorous, modern ball at the nicest club in the city. 3. On a historic American fi eld watching a Civil War era cannon fi re a shot into the night sky. 4. Small, stinky feet jamming into my ribs in a cook ie cutter hotel room. Those are some of the impactful sights I have been lucky enough to witness on New Year’s Eves through out my life. You have one guess to solve the mystery of which one of those examples came while with kids. (Hint: my ribs are on the mend.) No. 4 occurred this past New Year’s Eve. It’s a holi day that lost much of its luster for me once sleep be came more scattered in parenthood. In an eff ort to re vitalize the holiday, our family of four decided to grab a hotel room close to the coast so we could watch the fi rst sunrise of the new year come up over the Atlantic Ocean. Despite a cloudy morning ruining the sun’s fi rst tri umphant hello of 2022, the weekend was a complete success thanks to an unlikely hero: the hotel. After spending three separate nights at three diff er ent modest hotels in the past six months, nothing has captured my two boys’ amazement and collective wonder as an overnight stay in a chain hotel.
Our rooms are hardly the high roller suites in a swanky Las Vegas casino. Nope. Just the ones where the smell of burnt lobby coff ee collides with waves of chlorine hitting you when the door to the pool room opens and shuts. The experience of staying at a localish hotel seems backwards: diverting money from my mortgage obli gation of paying for the rooms in my building (Read: home) to pay extra for money to sleep in a diff erent room of a diff erent building. After our third such overnight stay, it was clear how excited my kids get when staying at a hotel. Namely, the fl ood of tears that comes when it is time to leave is a dead giveaway. What wasn’t so clear was one ques tion… Why?? The things they were reacting so positively to didn’t help answer anything… Them: “We have a bed!” Me: “You HAVE a bed at home. And it’s bigger there.” Them: “We have a weird, cool thing in this closet.” Me: “That’s an iron. We won’t be needing to iron your Sonic the Hedgehog shirt today. Also, once again, we have one at home.” Them: (looking at a single plastic cup in the room
covered by a clear plastic bag) “It’s so fancy!” Me: Fancy? We routinely buy 100 of these at a time for $3. Them: (Gasp). “They have Starburst candies in the vending machine!” Me: You have Starburst candies in your luggage right there! Remember that you begged me to get some? They didn’t remember. Oh well. Without question, the biggest attraction at the hotel is the pool. And I get it. To swim anywhere in New Eng land before Memorial Day without a wetsuit is a lavish treat. But on one of our stay overs, the pool declared swimmable and open by hotel personnel sat cold and cloudy with a deep green fi lm forming at the bottom. Still, it was to quote two young goofballs I was stay ing with, the “best trip ever!” Did the greensludged pool fumes impact their judgment? Their overwhelming joy couldn’t have been the al lure of the continental breakfast either. With their food allergies, other eating arrangements were made. So close to the doityourself waffl e maker, yet so far from an answer. Why then? Why? I asked them plenty of questions in the days that followed each trip to learn what I could. After listening to their answers, remembering their reactions and the answer became clear. We broke our routine and created a new experience. That’s it. While it may seem a bit hilarious to think of kids needing to break free of the daily grind, that’s some times what everyone needs, age 4114. We invested our time and energy and found a way to provide each other with a new adventure even if much of the “new expe rience” was doing what we normally do in a diff erent setting. While our muse seems to be an occasional trip to a hotel, I could see other families fi nding similar new ex perience traditions ones that don’t need to cost a dime. Just think, plan and go. You’ll be rewarded, I promise. If you could see the reaction they got from a wrapped paper cup or a vend ing machine snack, you’d understand. These hotels might as well have been the twinkling Montreal New Year’s lights or the fancy ball in the big city. Maybe even better. No, defi nitely better. Taking a New Year’s Eve trip to a hotel is offi cially our new tradition. Here’s to hoping we see the sun this time around. Even if we don’t, there will still be plenty of coff ee waiting for me in the lobby to keep me awake. And that burnt smell? It’s just the scent of our one night home away from home. Josh Farnsworth is a husband, father of goofballs Cooper and Milo, goofball himself, and awardwin ning writer and columnist living in Worcester. He can be reached for column ideas at josh.farnsworth@ya hoo.com. BayStateParent | JUNE 2022 | 9
