22. Sloane
Sloane
When people say “it takes a village,” they don’t mention that the village will immediately devolve into a feudal war the second you introduce a baby.
Eden and I have survived nearly three months of new parenthood without smothering each other or Olivia, so we decide it’s safe to unearth ourselves from the Denver domestic bunker and host the first full-family barbecue since the child was born.
We’re both dreading it. Not because our parents are monsters—if anything, they’re aggressively supportive, weaponizing casseroles and passive-aggressive optimism with equal force—but because Eden’s mom and my own have turned grandparenthood into a competitive blood sport.
If Eden and I don’t intervene, we’re one baby-themed embroidery contest away from a live taping of Grandmothers Gone Wild.
This is “The Great Grandparent Games.” Capital letters and all.
We’re prepping in the kitchen. Eden’s icing a cake, but the middle layer is already sliding, and her left hand is stained blue from the food coloring.
Olivia lies in her rocker, chewing her fist, and I’m staring down the barrel of another twelve-pack of Hawaiian rolls, trying to figure out if I’m supposed to slice them before or after the oven.
“Don’t forget, my mum’s allergic to pine nuts now,” Eden says, spreading butter with the fatalism of someone who knows it won’t matter.
“Noted,” I say, and begin hiding snacks like we’re prepping for a squirrel uprising.
“I bet your mum tries to one-up mine with the baby gift,” Eden says, voice low. “I’m calling it now: we’re getting a monogrammed bassinet, or a gold-plated rattle, or something with an embroidered nursery rhyme. Probably all three.”
Mom and Liz are extremely close, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t partial to a lot of Grandma-related rivalry.
I shudder. “Last time, she knitted a hat for the baby and a matching one for the cat.”
“The Gremlin hated it. She shat in it on purpose.”
“She’s a trendsetter. I hear baby-cat twinsies are big on TikTok.”
Eden snorts, then eyes the oven clock. “Think they’ll arrive at the exact same time?”
I check my phone, which is already vibrating with a warning text from my own mom telling me they’re leaving now and that Eden has to make more of that coffee cake, because it’s divine.
“Bishop parents are two minutes out,” I say.
Eden sighs, then offers her hand for a solidarity squeeze. “Let’s get this over with.”
The first car in the driveway is a Prius with a pride flag decal and a fresh dent in the back bumper. My dad, ever the drama queen, honks three times, then yells out the window, “Where’s my favorite grandchild?”
Behind them, the Sawyer mobile—still with a faded “Run Like Hell” marathon sticker and at least two flags of indeterminate nationality—rolls up with more subtlety but equal menace. Eden’s mom exits the passenger side with a Tupperware tower, her hair already escaping its tie.
The next ten minutes are a logistical hellscape.
My mom, whose arms are at all times loaded with more bags than a New York tourist, beelines for the baby and bypasses me entirely.
Eden’s mom, meanwhile, forces her way past my dad at the front door with more force than necessary.
Both women make a show of handing off their homemade foods, then size each other up over the counter with the laser focus of champion dart players.
My dad and Eden’s dad exchange a hug. It’s actually kind of sweet.
Olivia, the bait in this human trap, is immediately claimed by my mother, who scoops her from the rocker chair and begins narrating every facial expression to anyone in earshot.
“Look at those eyes! She’s got the Bishop stare, you can’t argue with genetics.”
Eden’s mom, undeterred, hovers by the toy basket. “She’s got Eden’s hands, though—see those fingers? She’ll be an artist. Or a musician, maybe.”
I catch Eden’s eye and mouth, “Survival mode.” She nods grimly, wipes her hands, and lets the grandparental forces battle it out on the living room floor.
The first real test comes with the changing of the diaper, a ritual I thought was private but is now apparently an audience event. The baby’s crying, and before I can even unstrap her, both grandmothers descend, cooing and waving wipes like white flags.
“I’ll do it,” says my mom, already unzipping the onesie.
“No, no, let me!” insists Liz, wielding a cloth diaper with the practiced flip of a stage magician.
Eden tries to intervene: “Guys, it’s just a diaper—”
But she’s too late. The moms square off at the changing table, each taking a leg, and for a minute it looks like they’re about to tear the child in half. Olivia, sensing the commotion, stops crying and watches in fascination as two grown women begin a silent, passive-aggressive speed contest.
My mom executes a flawless wipe-and-fold, then tags in with a fresh diaper and a single, theatrical shake of baby powder. Eden’s mom retaliates by snapping the onesie shut with a velocity that leaves my child cross-eyed.
Olivia, now dry, looks from one grandma to the other and, after a moment’s deliberation, sneezes directly into my mom’s cleavage.
Round one: Sawyer.
Eden is trying not to laugh. “If your mum brings out the bottle, I’ll bet you five bucks mine tries to breastfeed,” she whispers.
I don’t doubt it.
Meanwhile, the grandfathers have begun their own contest: who can make the baby laugh first. My dad is a master of silly faces, and currently has both hands mashed against his cheeks, eyes bulging like an angry frog.
Eden’s dad pulls out a harmonica of all things and attempts to play “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The noise is somewhere between train whistle and dying goose, but Olivia is into it, and after a few bars she lets out a delighted shriek.
She’s only three months old so not quite at the laughing milestone yet, but Eden’s dad refuses to hear it. It’s more likely she has to fart and that’s the noise she makes to let us know.
Eden’s dad pumps a fist, victorious, but my dad is not to be outdone—he leaps onto the floor and demonstrates his patented “caterpillar crawl.”
The baby gurgles. My dad, oblivious to the dangers of antique furniture, repeats the trick until Eden’s mom makes him stop with an exasperated, “For the love of all things holy. You’re going to fracture something!”
At some point, I realize Eden and I are basically relegated to the role of food prep and baby refueling.
We shuttle snacks to the adults, hand off the child at regular intervals, and swap sarcastic commentary over the kitchen island.
Olivia is officially no longer ours. She’s been drafted into the Grandparental Cold War, and we are the embassies tasked with keeping the nuclear codes out of mini hands.
Eden wipes baby drool from her arm and grins at me, eyes wild with delight and disbelief. “Remember when we thought we could keep them from spoiling her?”
I snort. “We are so outnumbered.”
The barbecue itself is less meal, more performance art.
Eden’s dad grills enough veggie sausages to feed a small militia, and my dad insists on turning each veggie burger at exactly thirty-second intervals.
Both men share grill duties, which is to say they drink beer and bicker over charcoal placement until the food is charred to a uniform shade of black.
The mothers, meanwhile, take turns telling Olivia stories about “when your mom was little” and “when your other mum was an even bigger pain in the arse.” These tales are all half-true and mostly mortifying, especially when Eden’s mom recounts the time Eden glued her own hands to a shoebox thinking the box would eventually grow onto her body.
“We left her like that for the afternoon,” she says, beaming with pride. “She drew faces on the box and named it Susan.”
“Did you really?” I whisper.
Eden’s face goes the exact shade of the strawberry shortcake on the table. “I was six. Susan was my only friend until I met Pia, so don’t judge.”
The grandparent gift-off comes at dessert. Eden’s mom brings out a hand-knitted blanket in pastel hues, with “Olivia” spelled across the bottom in block letters. It’s actually gorgeous, and Eden’s eyes get a little shiny when she wraps the baby in it.
Not to be outdone, my mom produces a box that, when opened, reveals a tiny silver spoon, engraved with the family crest and Olivia’s birthday. It’s unnecessarily over-the-top.
The two women spend the next half hour trading compliments on each other’s handiwork, while also listing all the ways their own gift is better. “That spoon will last a hundred years.” “This blanket is machine washable and she’ll treasure it forever.”
Olivia, true to form, ignores both and strains to shit herself again.
After cake, the adults begin to wind down.
My dad falls asleep in the hammock, beer balanced precariously on his chest. Eden’s dad takes over the grill cleanup, humming quietly to himself.
The moms sit side by side on the porch swing, Olivia cocooned in their arms, both women cooing and poking at her cheeks in perfect harmony.
Eden slides next to me at the edge of the patio. She smells like sunblock and cake, and her arm is sticky but warm against mine.
“So,” she murmurs, “think we’ll ever get her back?”
I watch the baby, now queen of the backyard, surrounded by four doting adults. I know the answer.
“Nope. But at least we’ve got free babysitting for life.”
Eden laughs and leans her head on my shoulder. “There’s worse ways to lose a power struggle.”
Flopping onto the couch, I already regret how much pulled pork I ate. I stretch my legs until my feet brush the edge of a brand new bouncer, still in its packaging.
“You think our parents are going to back off now, or is this just…life, forever?”
Eden sits down beside me, half on my lap, hair still smelling faintly of barbecue smoke and sunshine. “I think they’re just getting started,” she says, and there’s zero humor in her tone, just resignation.
For a while, we don’t talk. I stare at the ceiling, at the popcorn texture I keep swearing I’ll scrape off someday, and listen to Olivia’s gentle snuffle from across the room.
Eden traces the lines of my palm with her fingertip, the motion soft and automatic, and I let my brain empty out like a balloon with a slow leak.
Eventually, she nudges me. “I know today was insane, but…it wasn’t bad, was it?”
“No,” I admit. “I mean, yeah, it was The Hunger Games out there, but everyone was just…happy to be together.”
We sit there a little longer, watching the baby sleep, her face slowly relaxing until she looks like a different person altogether.
I can see flashes of both of us in her—the stubborn chin, the perfect arch of a single eyebrow, the almost comically large hands.
The blanket slips off her feet, and Eden gets up to tuck her in.
She moves with the kind of reverence she used to reserve for first editions and rare vinyl.
I pick up the xylophone Eden’s parents bought and run a thumb over the keys.
There’s no mute button but it’s not as loud as I expected, and the colors are nice, bright and honest. Olivia will probably love it when she’s actually old enough to use it, or even comprehend what the hell it is.
She’ll probably love the socks, too, and the onesie, and even the Bluetooth speaker, assuming it doesn’t fry her brain with microwaves.
I’m going to have to have a serious word with both sets of parents.
Eden stands behind me, arms looped around my neck. I lean back against her, and for the first time since the barbecue, I don’t feel totally overwhelmed. Just…content. Like this mess, this pile of baby shit and competitive grandparenting, is exactly where I’m supposed to be.
“You ready for round two next week?” Eden asks, voice low.
“God, no,” I say, but I smile anyway. “Let’s just survive tonight.”
She nods, her cheek pressed to mine. “Survival of the fittest,” she whispers, and I laugh.
Olivia snorts in her sleep, and I swear she’s smiling.
The next morning, I wake to the sound of Eden snorting so violently she nearly drops her phone into the baby’s bassinet. Olivia, who has inherited only Eden’s capacity for side-eye, glares up from her nest of rainbow socks and does not appreciate the disturbance.
I rub at my eyes. “What’s so funny?”
She flashes her phone screen at me. It’s a group text, and Pia has, in her infinite lack of chill, announced that she and the kids are coming over today “with reinforcements”—namely Becca and Bella, who are apparently “bored out of their queer minds” and demanding brunch at our place.
The message is accompanied by a GIF of a raccoon breaking into a house.
I groan. “It’s not even ten a.m.”
Eden grins, wicked. “We’re the only house in the zip code with a functioning espresso machine and a three-month-old who is, and I quote, ‘objectively the cutest baby in the state of Colorado, fight me.’”
I briefly consider hiding in the crawlspace, but there isn’t enough Xanax in the county to get me down there with the spiders.
“You love it,” Eden says, nudging me with her foot. She’s not wrong. There’s something addictive about the pace of our lives now, the constant, chaotic churn of people in and out of our orbit. I’d just like a warning shot before the circus comes to town.
We have half an hour to shower, caffeinate, and make the house look less like a FEMA site. I’m halfway through loading the dishwasher when Eden appears in the kitchen, Olivia cradled against her chest.
“Do you remember what it was like to have a lazy Sunday?” she asks.
“If you say ‘before the baby,’ I will murder you with this spatula.”
Her smile softens. “No, like, before all of it. When brunch was just…sex and bagels?”
I do remember. I remember waking up after a full night’s sleep, eating dry cereal out of a mug or an egg and fake bacon sandwich. I remember weekends that stretched on forever, and the way I counted down the hours until Monday because I had nothing better to do. Truth is, I like the noise better.
The doorbell rings, and Eden hands me the baby, wordlessly appointing me to child duty while she answers the door.
Olivia squirms, eyes wide, and makes a sound like a small, indignant goat.
I bounce her absentmindedly, and she calms, but I can already feel the tension building in her tiny, furious body. She knows a party when she smells one.
The front door explodes inward. Pia barrels in, followed by her two spawn, Meena and Arin, who are dressed in matching soccer kits and already fighting over who gets the Xbox controller.
Behind them, Becca and Bella drift through the entryway, hand in hand—Becca looking faintly hungover and Bella carrying a paper bag that I’m 97% sure is full of doughnuts.
Another day in the Sawyer-Bishop household has begun.