A Bidet to Remember

By Melanie Dale

There’s something in me that can’t quit trying to make magical memories. Why can’t I just check off boxes? I have to make everything a special event. And I guess “special” for me means trips to the mountains.

We’ve been taking Elliott on college visits and when he toured a school in north Georgia, not too far from Blue Ridge, I decided to make a weekend out of it. We’d hike and visit my dad’s art in a gallery up there and eat yummy food and chew the scenery. I rented a cabin near the lake.

We hiked to the top of a mountain, a Georgia mountain, which I believe out west they’d call a hill, but it was a glorious hike nonetheless. I threw out the question, “What would your dream cabin look like,” and the three of us had a great conversation creating our perfect mountain getaways—mine for yoga and writing retreats, Alex’s for boating on the lake, and Elliott’s as more of an evil lair for sci-fi villains.

When we arrived at the rental, we found a large binder on the kitchen counter that explained how to talk to the house. This was our first encounter with a smart home, not that our house is dumb, but for instance, if we want to turn something on at our house, we flick a switch. At this rental cabin when we wanted to turn on a light or a ceiling fan, we were supposed to talk to it.

I’d stand next to the light switch flipping it up and down and nothing would happen. Then I’d start speaking to the air, “Alexa, turn on the lights.” Nothing would happen. “Alexa, please turn on the lights.” Nothing. “Alexa, lights on.” The lights would go on, but they’d be too bright, so then I’d have to be more specific and ask for fifty percent. The fans wouldn’t go on and we had to consult the binder. It wanted you to be specific about the fans. Not just “fan on,” but “back fan on” or “center fan on.”

The house had a lot of things we’d never encountered before, and the first morning we were there, I heard Alex scream and a lot of banging around. I ran to the bathroom to see what had happened and he stood there dripping with sour-smelling water. The bathroom was soaked.

“What happened?” I asked, trying and failing not to laugh.

The toilet had a bidet. We don’t have one at home, so the last thing I’m going to do is try one out at a rental cabin where I can barely figure out the light switches. So when I used the bathroom, I noticed the bidet, touched nothing, and moved on with my life.

But Alex was curious. He didn’t want to use the bidet. He just wanted to see how it worked. So he bent down and put his face right in front of the bidet and pushed the button, which he thought would just turn it on, but which in fact activated it immediately, spraying him point blank in the face, catapulting him into the shelves behind, and shooting jets of sour water all over the bathroom at a velocity intended to power wash someone’s dirty bung hole.

It was a bidet to remember.

But did I learn from that experience? No, I did not. I must make magical mountain memories. The bidet was a one-off. I’d find a cabin with less technology and we’d be fine.

For Alex’s birthday this year, I researched the cutest, tiniest, most romantic cabin in Blue Ridge I could find and whisked him away from work for a smoldering getaway, complete with a rustic mountain sauna tucked among the trees.

Bedecked with twinkle lights, the tiny cabin promised an oasis from our busy lives when we slid open the farmhouse doors and stepped into the cozy space. A small sofa fit perfectly in the downstairs nook, with a bathroom mere inches away. In front of the miniature kitchen space, a ladder reached up to the loft, where the comfy bed beckoned us.

What a perfect getaway to celebrate Alex with no distractions of city life. Why did we live in such a large house with multiple rooms? Did our house have too many doors? Why did we need so much separation? The tiny cabin would bring us together, no walls to come between us. Such paradise.

As I climbed the ladder to the bed, I noticed that my post-menopausal middle-aged body didn’t hoist quite as easily as I remembered and the rungs dug into the thinning soles of my feet. When was the last time I climbed a ladder? When the kids were little, at the park, maybe? Funny how I don’t encounter ladders in my everyday life. I’m not a firefighter, after all.

We made it up, crawling to the bed on our hands and knees, as the roof was on a steep pitch and right there on top of us. I was proud of myself for not hitting my head once, as I gave Alex a long, luxurious massage. (Not a euphemism.)

After his birthday massage, he crawled to the ladder to climb down and use the bathroom. Hm, that wasn’t ideal for our aging bladders that need to pee forty-five times a night. He made it down and into the bathroom, and I lay back on the bed, smelling the essential oils I’d used for his birthday massage.

I was so proud of myself for surprising him with this getaway. We’d both been working so hard and this was just what we needed to relax and recharge. “Experiences over possessions,” I always said. See? This was so much more meaningful than a new outfit or some fitness gadget.

I wondered what was taking him so long. We still had quite the evening ahead of us at our romantic mountain getaway. Suddenly the unmistakable sound of projectile vomit ricocheted through the small space. Did I mention how small the space was? I believe the word I used was tiny.

Tiny homes, tiny cabins, tiny things are in, and after this overnight, I feel certain that tiny things are for the youth, whose fortitude and optimism bolster them along life’s little adventures. Middle-aged people celebrating a quarter century of marriage need spacious, sturdier settings for romance.

After the flushing of what I could only assume was a kidney and part of his large intestine, Alex gingerly made his way rung by rung up to the bed.

“I think I ate something bad,” he announced, crawling on all fours back toward the bed so as not to hit his head on the roof.

We’d stopped at an adorable little lunch place on the way there, and then we’d eaten a snack supper of food we bought at an apple-picking place nearby. It was all so romantic, but maybe less so coming back up.

Ah, food poisoning. In our twenty-five years of marriage, we’ve weathered it several times. He got it from the bean dip at a Y2K party, then again in Ethiopia from a steak. I got it in Ethiopia from a chimichanga, then again in Latvia from some goat cheese I left in the fridge too long. Memories.

He started to lie down, then shot back up, crawled back to the ladder, worked his way down the ladder rung by rung, then rushed back to the bathroom. I lay in bed listening to the sounds and noticing as the smell began to penetrate the essential oil barrier I’d created in the loft.

This cabin was too, too tiny. There were not enough walls and doors and square footage separating me from what was happening to the birthday boy below. I asked him if he wanted me to drive us home, but he explained that he needed to be geographically near the toilet for the foreseeable future. Right.

And so we settled in for the night, like a kid at a sleepover who wants to go home but doesn’t want to wake up her friend’s parents and lies there, making herself small, praying that her friends don’t accidentally or on purpose summon a demon with the Ouija board.

Except in this case, Alex wasn’t summoning a demon. But the results were similar to The Exorcist, vomit-wise. Maybe we needed a priest, but where would I find one in the woods up a mountain in the middle of the night?

Eventually the waves roiling through him subsided, and he decided to sleep on the small sofa next to the bathroom, for easy access to the toilet.

I slept in the loft and called down to him, “Happy birthday! Best present ever, right? I’m an awesome gift giver!”

Food poisoning and a rustic barf chalet. Next year, I’d just get him a sweater.

The next morning when I asked him if he still wanted to enjoy the mountain sauna, he winced and shook his head. “I’m too dehydrated.” From all the hot love diarrhea.

Between the smart cabin with the bidet facial and the tiny cabin with food poisoning, our cabin days are probably over. Next time I want to make memories at a rental in the mountains, we will instead stay home with our own food and doors and rooms and stairs and toilets that we understand how to use.

In the words of J.R.R. Tolkien, “Not all those who wander are lost,” but some of them may be covered in barf and bidet spray.

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Melanie Dale is the author of four books, Women Are Scary, It’s Not Fair, Infreakinfertility, and Calm the H*ck Down. She’s a writer for the TV series Creepshow, a monthly contributor for Coffee + Crumbs, and her essays are published in The Magic of Motherhood. She has appeared on Good Morning America and has been featured in articles in Cosmopolitan, Real Simple, The Bump, Working Mother, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and the Los Angeles Times. To get out of the office, she spent the last few years shambling about as various zombies on The Walking Dead. She and her husband live in the Atlanta area with three kids from three different continents and an anxious Maltipoo named Khaleesi.

Photo by

Jennifer Floyd

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