Bubble Rap: Susie Lau on the trials and tribulations of last minute holidays

The original plan for August was to beach out like a literal whale in her third trimester and not do much at all.  I unofficially campaigned for an August-off-off tradition to be instated in this country.  True to form though I’ve bolted from my own intentions.  Who am I kidding?  I’ve never beached out anywhere for longer than a few days.  I don’t quite know how to do a do-nothing holiday.  The whir of my mind is always going, “But what can we DO/SEE and more importantly EAT?”  I take 15 minutes to get comfortable on a poolside lounger and then find the texture of the towel on the chair is rubbing me up the wrong way.

As per my last minute dot com style of organising trips, I’ve cobbled together a Tetris game of a trip to Lake Garda.  I’ve never been so might as well try and cram in as much as I can, right, even as I lumber about with what is essentially a heavy sack of potatoes on my front and overpacked luggage (whoever can hand-carry only when travelling with children, I salute you).  Five wildly different hotels.  Five varying buffet breakfasts .  Five tactics of scrambling for optimum poolside seats.  Eight days.  Alone with my five-year-old daughter as my partner is away for work.  We’re currently girls (plus bump) on tour.  I looked upon it as quite possibly (touch fake wood in my Enchanted Forest themed hotel room in ageing theme park Gardaland as I type this) the last time she and I will go away on our own, as our family unit once again shifts with new additions to her co-parented setup.

I imagined silly tete-a-tetes, nights in with novelty face masks and consolidations of what I consider to be a slightly off-kilter mother-daughter relationship.  All of that has come to pass thus far as we’re on hotel number three and every day is the “best day ever” for her, as I’ve cannily opted for family friendly accommodation as opposed to places that Conde Nast Traveller might recommend.

In establishments where resort cartoon mascots come grinning at you at breakfast, you realise the 2.4 children setup with team-tagging normative role-assuming parents is very much alive and prevalent, whatever statistics say.  The dads lift buggies and car seats willingly but tut when ketchup is squirted all over the table or sigh when their kids aren’t swimming as proficiently as they would like.  The mums change five times a day to get as much mileage out of their very much pre-planned holiday wardrobe because their day to day routine doesn’t normally allow for mascara.  Their Bugaboo prams bear the weight of their Louis Vuitton Neverfull (but obvs full) totes.

When you’re waddling around these environments solo with your daughter in tow, there’s an auto-pilot explanatory shield that goes up.  My daughter knows it well.  In the pool she’ll see a dad playing with their children and she’ll blurt out, “My mum and dad decided they aren’t happy together so they don’t live with each other.”  Cue an exchange of embarrassed glances.  At dinner another overshare speciality of hers is going up to families and explaining the concept of girlfriends and boyfriends and then side-eyeing me in that sassy way of hers and declaring, my mummy/daddy has a boyfriend/girlfriend.  Cue withering slash bemused looks from their parents and depending on how old their sprogs are, an occasional look of horror as they’ve yet to have the “families without solid mums and dads” convo.  Nico is basically here to dispense some family setup truth serum.

As for me because I generally loathe polite small talk, I smile awkwardly, shrug and then steer her back to me with a TMI warning in Cantonese.  Good thing we’re switching hotels again in a day.  Next year, a secluded villa in the middle of nowhere it is.