As told by Bronwyn Romy, Guest Columnist
The Sweet Potato
Look, I need you to understand something before I tell you this story. I am a good mother. I pack organic snacks. I read parenting books. I do the gentle parenting thing where you get down on their level and validate their feelings. I’m trying here.
But on Easter Sunday 2010, at the Easter Buffet at an unnamed steakhouse, I seriously considered leaving my four-year-old son in the bathroom and starting a new life in Canada.
It started innocently enough. We’d driven to the restaurant because Mitch insisted that Easter Sunday at a buffet was “a Romy family tradition.” Never mind that we’d only done it once before. Mitch likes to declare things traditions if they involve all-you-can-eat anything.
We were halfway through our meal—Ty was building some kind of ham fortress on his plate while Mitch went back for his third trip to the dessert bar—when Ty looked up at me with those big brown eyes.
“Mommy, I need to go potty.”
Simple words. Four-year-old words. Words I’d heard a thousand times before.
“Okay, buddy, let’s go.”
“But Mommy, I need to go now.”
There it was. The urgency in his voice. The slight bounce starting in his seat. The universal signs that we had maybe ninety seconds before this became everyone’s problem.
I grabbed his hand and pulled him out of the booth. Mitch looked up from his plate of four different kinds of pie.
“Where are you—”
“Bathroom. Emergency. Don’t ask.”
I speed-walked through that restaurant like I was competing in the Olympic Mom Walk—you know the one, where you’re moving as fast as humanly possible without actually running because you’re in public and you have a reputation to maintain. Ty trotted beside me, already doing The Dance.
“How long, Mommy? How long until—”
“Soon, baby. Very soon.”
We rounded the corner to the bathrooms, and I saw it: the line. Of course there was a line. It was Easter Sunday at a buffet restaurant. Somewhere, the universe was laughing at me.
There were three women ahead of us. Ty’s bouncing intensified.
“Mommy, there are people.”
“I see them, honey.”
“But Mommy, what if—”
“We’ll wait our turn. It’ll be fast.”
This was a lie. I knew it was a lie. Ty knew it was a lie. But we tell ourselves these lies to survive.
Ty started asking questions. This is what Ty does when he’s nervous. My beautiful, brilliant, inquisitive, blonde headed son asks approximately seven hundred questions per minute. Usually, I find it adorable. Usually.
“Mommy, why do ladies take so long in bathrooms?”
“Everyone’s different, sweetie.”
“But Mommy, how long is different? Is it like five minutes? Ten minutes? A hundred minutes?”
“Ty, inside voice, please.”
“But MOMMY—”
The door to the first stall clicked open. Thank God. We were making progress. I watched the door, ready to spring forward.
And then she emerged.
I want to be clear: I don’t judge people by their size. I really don’t. I’ve had a child. I know what bodies go through. But what walked out of that stall was a woman who looked like she’d made some serious buffet decisions and was now experiencing deep, profound regret.
She was sweating. Actually glistening. Her floral Easter dress was damp under the arms. She walked past us with the gait of someone whose body was staging a revolt, and the look on her face… that was the face of someone who knew she wasn’t done yet.
She got to the sinks, dabbed at her forehead with a paper towel, took a deep breath, and then—God help us all—turned around and went back into stall one.
My heart sank.
Ty’s eyes went wide. I watched his little brain processing what he’d just witnessed. I could actually see the gears turning. His mind was at full song, like a Cup Series Camaro on the Alabama Gang Superstretch at Talladega. And I knew—I knew—that whatever came out of his mouth next was going to ruin my life.
“Mommy…” His voice was too loud. It’s always too loud. “That lady is REALLY big.”
Oh no. Oh no no no no no.
Every woman in that bathroom heard him. I felt their eyes. I wanted to dissolve into the linoleum.
“Ty, shhh, that’s not—”
But Ty wasn’t done. Ty was never done. His face had gone pale, and sweat was beading on his forehead. The urgency was hitting critical levels, and when Ty gets panicked, his volume control completely disappears.
“MOMMY! WHAT ARE WE GOING TO DO?!”
Several women turned to look at us. I felt my face ignite.
“Ty, honey, please—”
“THAT WOMAN IS GOING TO BREAK THE POTTY!”
Time stopped. I swear to God, time actually stopped. The hand dryer cut off mid-blast. Someone dropped their purse. I heard a gasp from somewhere behind me.
And I just stood there, paralyzed, while my son—my beautiful, wonderful, socially oblivious son—continued to share his architectural concerns with the entire bathroom.
“WHERE WILL I GO, MOMMY?! WHEN SHE BREAKS IT, WHERE WILL I GO?!”
I couldn’t breathe. I literally couldn’t breathe. My brain was screaming at me to grab Ty and run—just burst through that door, sprint through the restaurant, get in the car, drive to Mexico, never speak of this again.
But my feet wouldn’t move. Because running would only make it worse, wouldn’t it? We’d still have to come back. We still had a half-eaten Easter dinner on our table. Mitch was still out there, obliviously eating pie. And Ty—oh God, Ty was still talking.
“IS THE POTTY GOING TO FALL THROUGH THE FLOOR?! WILL THERE BE A BIG HOLE?!”
I wanted to die. I genuinely wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole. I looked at the stall door—stall one, where the woman was definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent hearing every word of this.
“Ty,” I hissed, grabbing his shoulders and squatting down to his level. “There are TWO stalls. Two! See? That lady is in the other one.” I pointed desperately at stall two like I was giving directions to a lost tourist.
But Ty had locked onto his narrative. In his four-year-old mind, stall one was his destiny, and that destiny involved structural collapse and bathroom-related tragedy.
“BUT WHAT IF SHE ALREADY BROKE THAT ONE?! WHAT IF THEY’RE BOTH BROKEN?!”
The silence from stall one was absolutely deafening. I imagined that poor woman sitting there, probably crying, probably planning to never leave her house again. I imagined her telling this story at therapy. “And then this child said…”
Ty was hopping now, really hopping, his face scrunched up in genuine panic. “MOMMY, I REALLY HAVE TO GO! REALLY, REALLY BAD! BUT WHERE WILL I—”
FLUSH.
The most beautiful sound I’ve ever heard came from stall two. That flush was like angels singing. Like Morgan Freeman’s voice narrating my salvation.
The door flew open and a teenage girl practically ran out, making eye contact with absolutely no one as she fled the scene. Smart girl. She knew when to abandon ship.
“THERE! GO! NOW!” I shoved Ty into stall two so hard I probably violated several gentle parenting principles. I crammed myself in behind him and slammed that door like we were hiding from zombies.
I immediately put my hand over Ty’s mouth.
“Listen to me,” I whispered with an intensity I usually reserve for telling him not to touch the hot stove. “You are going to do your business, and you are NOT going to speak. Not one word. We are playing the quiet game. The VERY quiet game. Do you understand me?”
He nodded under my hand, his eyes wide.
“We are mimes now. Do you know what a mime is?”
He shook his head.
“They don’t talk. Ever. We are being mimes. Starting now.”
I slowly removed my hand from his mouth. He stared at me, and for once—for ONE blessed time in his life—my son was silent. He turned to the toilet and focused on the task at hand.
But we had a bigger problem.
We could not leave this bathroom before that woman left stall one. I would rather live in this stall. I would rather raise Ty in this stall, teach him to read in here, celebrate his birthday in here, than walk out and face that woman at the sinks.
I pressed my ear against the cold metal stall wall, listening. Nothing. No flush. No sound of movement. Was she waiting us out? Was she too mortified to leave? Had she actually collapsed in there? Should I check? Could I check?
Ty finished and looked up at me, starting to open his mouth.
I clapped my hand over it again. “Still mimes,” I mouthed.
We stood there. Waiting. I counted the tiles on the floor. I studied the graffiti on the stall door (“Amanda + Josh 4ever” — and someone advertising a “Good Time” that was available. I didn’t take down the number). I contemplated every life choice that had led me to this moment.
Finally—finally—I heard it. The flush. The creak of a door that had been through some things. The heavy footsteps of a woman who would probably never speak to her family about this day.
I held my breath, counting. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. I made it to fifty Mississippi before I dared to crack open our stall door.
The bathroom was mostly empty. Just one woman at the sink who looked at us like we were feral animals emerging from the woods.
I grabbed Ty’s hand and power-walked out of there like we were fleeing a bank robbery. Which, emotionally speaking, we were.
When we got back to the table, Mitch looked up from his plate—now somehow loaded with three pieces of fried chicken—and opened his mouth to speak.
I watched him take in my appearance. My face, which I’m sure was the color of a fire truck. My hair, which I could feel was sticking up in several directions. My eyes, which probably looked like I’d witnessed a murder.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
I stared at him. This man. This sweet, oblivious man who had spent the last ten minutes peacefully enjoying the expansive buffet while I lived through a trauma that would require years of therapy to process.
“Fine,” I said, my smile so tight I thought my face might crack. “Everything is fine.”
I saw the recognition in his eyes. He’s been married to me long enough to know that tone. That’s the “if you value your life, you will not ask follow-up questions” tone.
“Great! I saved you some rolls.”
Ty climbed into his seat, reached for his chocolate milk, and said with the casual air of someone discussing the weather: “Daddy, did you know that really big people can break toilets?”
I closed my eyes. “Ty.”
Mitch looked between us. I saw his hand move toward the butter knife on the table, then freeze. I saw the calculation happen in his brain.
“You know what?” he said, standing up so fast his chair scraped. “I just remembered I need more… food. Much more food. All the food.”
He practically ran to the buffet.
Smart man.
I sat down, pulled my plate toward me, and stared at my cold mashed potatoes. From across the dining room, I spotted a woman in a floral dress who obviously had hurriedly tried to get out of the bathroom as her hem was tucked into her pantyhose, speed-walking toward the exit like her life depended on it. She never looked back.
I grabbed a dinner roll and shoved it in my mouth.
Some days, you survive. That’s all you can ask for.
Mitch came back twenty minutes later with a plate of brownies and didn’t ask a single question for the rest of the meal.
I’m keeping him.
But we’re never going back to that rather delicious restaurant. We’re not even driving past it. In fact, I’m lobbying to have that entire exit removed from the highway.
