Cabo San Lucas, Mexico: March 2019 - The Trip We Were Supposed to Take Was Different

My husband died on January 4th, 2019. My son was four and a half months old.

We were supposed to go to Whistler that month — MLK weekend, our first family ski trip. That trip didn't happen. A lot of things didn't happen that winter.

What happened instead was that my friend called. She had a house in Cabo. I'd been there the years before when I'd visited without a baby, without any of this. She said come. She had a car. She had a second bedroom and a second set of hands and a willingness to just listen. She said bring him.

I said yes before I could talk myself out of it.

The logistics were simpler than I expected, and I want to be honest about that because I think people assume logistics are what stops them. They're not. What stops you is the weight of everything else. The logistics, it turns out, are solvable.

I had pushed to get my son a passport immediately after he was born — a slightly paranoid act of planning that made no practical sense at the time and made all the sense in the world now. San Diego to Cabo is a direct Southwest flight. My friend had a car, which meant no navigating car seats in foreign taxis with a six-month-old. She had hands besides mine.

Things I learned on this trip that I will tell every new parent:

The empty seat rule: if there's an open seat on the plane, ask at the gate if you can bring your car seat on. Southwest said yes. Window seat only. My son flew secured in his own seat, which meant I flew with two hands free and a baby who was contained and comfortable. Ask every time.

Global Entry does not know that your infant has no criminal history. I did not know this. I learned it on the return trip when we were turned away from the Global Entry line. Even a six-month-old needs their own enrollment. Do this before your first trip back from abroad.

In Cabo we went to Acre — a farm and restaurant with animals wandering through the banana trees, the kind of place where the line between lunch and a nature walk gets pleasantly blurry. My son was six months old and completely unbothered by the roosters.

My friend is a veterinarian technician. She regularly fed and spayed the feral cats in her neighborhood. We spent real time with those cats. My son was fascinated in the way babies are fascinated by anything that moves — pure, uncomplicated delight.

We bathed him in a bucket, which is both a logistical necessity and, I would argue, the correct aesthetic choice for a Baja beach trip.

I fed him a small amount of hot sauce, which is the kind of decision you make when going through new-motherhood grief and your sense of consequences has reorganized itself entirely. He made a face. He was fine. It was the funniest thing that had happened to me in weeks.

We got taken out by a wave at the beach, his first trip into the ocean. Both of us rolled. The ocean does not adjust for your circumstances. It was fine.

I took midday naps. This sounds like a small thing. It was not a small thing.

At night, after my son went down, my friend and I stayed up late and I talked. I told her everything — all of it, the grief and the fear and the strange numbness that sits underneath both of them when you have a baby to care for and no option to stop. She listened. She didn't try to fix it. She just let me say it all out loud, which is sometimes the only thing that helps.

I am not sure I can fully explain what it meant to leave. Not to escape — you don't escape any of this — but to be somewhere else, with someone who loved me, in a place where the absence didn't have a shape in every room.

My son was six months old and needed me and milk and sleep and everything else was scenery. There is something clarifying about being needed so simply when everything else is complicated.

We were supposed to go to Whistler. We went to Cabo instead. A direct flight, a friend with a car and a house and a willingness to listen, and a baby who did not know yet what had happened.

That was enough. It was more than enough.

Practical notes: Southwest Cabo direct from SAN. Empty seat carseat policy — ask at the gate, window seat required. Global Entry required for all travelers including infants — enroll before your first international trip. Acre restaurant — worth it. Bucket bath — highly recommended.