The adult in the room
I’ve spent more time with babies in the past week than in all my other years combined.
VANCOUVER – Leah and I are waiting for our appetizers when I hear the sound from over my shoulder.
It’s my 33rd birthday and, to celebrate, we’ve booked a two-top at Joe Fortes, my favourite restaurant in perhaps the entire city, if not the entire world.
It’s a surprisingly busy night for the chop house, and the main floor dining room is packed with happy, gluttonous patrons. They slurp back fresh East Coast Oysters and creamy bowls of lobster bisque, they thrust their knives into 12-ounce New York Striploin steaks so hard it sends shockwaves through their uncorked bottles of Sandhill Merlot.
I like the restaurant because it’s upscale in an obvious, 1980s power lunch sort of way. The room, which spans two floors, the dining room and upper mezzanine, is anchored by a giant oyster bar, and awash in golds, browns, and mahogany. The waiters wear white dinner jackets. They put paper on top of the tables to protect the linen tablecloths. They call me sir.
Tonight, they’ve seated us in the “wine room,” a small alcove within spitting distance of the kitchen, where a rolling step ladder offers access to the restaurant’s more premium vintages. In theory, Joseph Fortes, as I call it, is a place where six-figure financial types in pinstripe Armani suits can drink dirty martinis and snort rails in the bathroom. In practice, it’s where your grandma can dunk some fresh bread in house-made lobster oil, and dive head-first into a big glass of buttery chardonnay. This dichotomy pleases me to no end.
Like any swank establishment, Joe’s relies on a live piano player to drown out the culinary clatter. So I’m annoyed that, instead, I’m suddenly hearing cartoon sound effects: crack, pow, zing, kaboom.
The noises are coming from the table behind me.
I turn to find a small child seated on a wooden chair, watching an even smaller iPad. Cartoons flash across the screen. A younger version of Batman’s Robin is fighting aliens at full volume, with no headphones. The child is seated next to her mom who is sipping white wine at a long table with three other adults. None of them seem to register the child, the iPad, or the fact that everyone in the wine room is now staring at them.
I turn back to face Leah, who has been sweetly talking this entire time. I’m not sure if she registers the iPad. If she has, she is choosing to ignore it. I want to do the same. And yet I’m distracted: by the sound, but also my thoughts about the sound, by my potential responses to the sound.
I’m sitting with Leah at Joseph Fortes. I am dreaming.
About tapping the mother on the shoulder and politely asking her to turn the iPad down, about asking the waiter to do it for me. I dream that I might be able to pull this off: to exert power in a way that is celebrated by my fellow diners, in a way that doesn’t ruin my birthday. That I might communicate my annoyance without being a child-hating asshole.
This has become a slight obsession of mine, being good with children without having any myself. My motivations are mostly selfish. My friends are having children and I know, to some extent, I need to get on board or get lost. But I also like the idea of being comfortable around children, of rearing other people’s kids, of being part of the so-called village.
I’ve spent more time with babies in the past week than in all my other years combined. This weekend with Max and Christy and baby Rema in Calgary, and with Dan and Robyn and baby Rowan in Canmore. This morning with Johanna and Annika in North Vancouver. I’ve held them, I’ve played with them, I’ve watched them sleep. In doing so I’ve expanded my social circle. I’ve invested in the bright, shiny future.
Here in the present, however, all I can see is the blue light of this child’s iPad. It’s so annoying that I almost say something. But I don’t. Instead, I smile and tell Leah that 33 feels “pretty good so far.” I try to be the adult in the room.
Suddenly, our waiter emerges with a basket of bread and two glasses of wine. He places a plate filled with lobster oil and balsamic vinegar on the table.
We cheers to my continued health and happiness and then dunk the bread in the oil and vinegar. The flavours slide across my tongue like Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. I realize no children are waiting for us back at home.
Things only improve from here.
Comments, criticisms, collaborations? Bang the inbox – ethan@humanpursuits.org