Room Service
By Ashlee Gadd
@ashleegadd
Fewer things delight me more than having a piping hot meal delivered straight to a hotel room.
I love the shiny metal plate covers. I love the over-the-top presentation. I love the tiny bottles of hot sauce, the miniature jars of jelly, the white ceramic ramekin holding a single perfect ball of butter. Sometimes they’ll add a bud vase with a single rose, or a spray of baby’s breath, which always makes me think of the scene in Legally Blond where Elle Woods acknowledges that yes, her resume is pink—and also scented. “It gives it a little something extra, don’t you think?”
My childhood summer vacations mostly consisted of week-long camping trips to Pinecrest, a popular camping site near Yosemite. As memory serves me, if my family ever stayed in hotels, they were the practical kind, a la Embassy Suites with their spacious rooms and free breakfast buffets. (Worth noting: I’m a parent now; I get the appeal.) When I was around 12 years old, my parents bought a timeshare in Hawaii. While certainly an upgrade from camping, every trip to the Big Island began with a trip to Costco, where we’d buy all the same food we ate at home, to be prepared in the condo kitchen.
To be clear: eating spaghetti in Hawaii is still … eating in Hawaii. I’m not complaining whatsoever. I’m just saying—I never lived out that part of Home Alone 2 where Kevin McAllister orders $967.43 worth of room service.
But oh how I wanted to.
Even as a newlywed, back in the glory days with two incomes and no kids, whenever we traveled, my husband and I rarely strayed from our practical spending habits. Why drop $62 ordering breakfast to the room when there’s a perfectly good Starbucks in the lobby?
In 2011, we traveled to Greece for what was meant to be Our Big Last Trip before embarking upon parenthood. We spent our first few days in the city of Oia, home to one of the most magnificent sunset views in the world. Lodging in Oia is expensive, so we opted for an affordable bed and breakfast over a fancy hotel. Much to our delight, though, the B&B offered room service. Every afternoon, Irini, the innkeeper, would call our room and ask what we’d like for breakfast the following morning. We could pick anything we wanted from the laminated menu on the nightstand.
The first morning, in an act of we-can’t-believe-we’re-really-here indulgence, we chose chocolate croissants. I’m sure I’d had a chocolate croissant before that moment, but I’d never had a chocolate croissant like that. The second you sliced through the shell, hot chocolate oozed out all over the plate like fondue.
Each morning, Irini would bring the trays to our room herself, singing, “Good moooooooorning!!”
The first time we heard her sing, Brett and I both stared at each other, stifling laughter. Is this lady for real? She was like a one-woman acapella show, a living musical. To this day, that is one of my most distinct memories of our trip: rich, warm chocolate cascading across a white plate, hand-delivered alongside Irini’s sing-song voice greeting the day like an opera.
We bounced around to a few other hotels in Santorini over the course of our 10-day trip, and continued ordering room service everywhere we went. We ordered breakfast every morning. We ordered chips and salsa every afternoon. We ordered beer and Diet Coke, gyros and flatbread and salads, and—because we are basic Americans—French fries with ketchup.
We ate at plenty of restaurants, too, but it was there, in Greece, where I first remember experiencing the magic of room service: the gift of being brought exactly what you need, exactly when you need it.
***
Brett and I have always been fans of eating in bed. I know some people think that’s gross, but those people are wrong.
I’ll admit, I aspire to be the type of mom who puts dinner on the table at 5 p.m. sharp (before everyone starts whining). I also aspire to be the type of mom who cooks one cohesive meal her entire family will eat, instead of whipping up a Hello Fresh box for two and a handful of quesadillas for the kids … again.
I aspire to be a lot of things.
Early in the pandemic, when the whole world seemed to fall apart overnight, when we couldn’t find toilet paper and were still sanitizing our groceries, our family dinners (note: I use “family dinners” loosely here) fell by the wayside. What can I say? We were exhausted. The schools were closed. Our childcare disappeared. All day, every day, my husband and I shuffled back and forth, taking turns working and caring for the kids. We became two passing ships—migrating around the house with laptops and coffee, hopping on and off Zoom calls while helping our oldest two children do the same (note: there was also a one-year-old, toddling around … somewhere).
I don’t have to tell you what it was like. You were there, too.
I’ve read accounts of families who grew closer during that tumultuous time, parents who successfully re-established rhythms and routines, especially around meals. Mothers who learned to make sourdough bread. Dads who were suddenly home for dinner, every night, on time, overjoyed to partake in the dinnertime festivities.
And then there was … our family.
I don’t remember exactly how the habit formed. Probably the way all habits are formed. You do something once, realize it works, so you do it again and again and again.
Here’s how it started. One night, we made the kids dinner and plopped them down at the table with three plastic plates and an old, cracked iPad streaming Curious George. Our oldest two outgrew the PBS app long ago, but, at the time, we didn’t allow screen time during the week (ha!), so I’m left to believe even a “baby show” felt like a treat. They devoured their dinners in complete silence, eyes glazed over, glued on the monkey and the man with the yellow hat. For 30, maybe 45 minutes—all three kids did not make a peep.
Peace washed over our house like rain falling on desert ground.
We repeated this strategy the following night, and the night after that. Brett and I would quietly sneak out of the kitchen with our own plates, retreating to our bedroom, just the two of us, where we’d eat our own dinner in bed.
We weren’t in a hotel, and this wasn’t room service, but the act undeniably offered us a sliver of serenity. A minute to relax. Exhale. Reconnect. We’d swap stories of what we’d seen on the news, and, when we couldn’t do that anymore, we’d stick a laptop on the bed and turn on The Office or Friends, watching episodes we’d already seen 100 times, a specific type of comfort.
I often felt guilty about our new routine—the kids eating in front of an iPad, and us eating in bed—even though that half hour was typically the only break we’d get from each other. I worried we were ruining the family dinner rhythm we had never even mastered. That we were digging ourselves into a hole it would be hard to climb out of later.
And yet—the kids were happy. Calm. Quiet.
(We were, too.)
Eating in bed never felt so good.
***
The day I learned I was having a miscarriage, I came home, climbed into bed, and barely got out of it for two weeks.
The first week, waiting for the D&C, my body still felt pregnant, but my mind knew I wouldn’t be much longer. This disconnect is a specific type of torture. Mentally, I had accepted the loss, but physically, my body remained in denial. My emotions hovered somewhere in between, suspended in mid-air. I couldn’t stop crying.
After the D&C, my body tricked me for a day. I only had some light spotting. But then came day two. Day three. Day four. I’d never seen so much blood.
Food appeared on the porch daily, like manna. Pizza, salad, baked mac n’ cheese. Meatballs with bulgogi sauce over jasmine rice. Bags of groceries, Cheez-its, cardboard boxes filled with soup and bread. DoorDash and Grubhub gift cards popped up in my inbox. We used them all—for sandwiches, for pasta, for lemon chicken with a side of mashed potatoes.
A complete stranger from the Internet sent a box of cookies. I tracked her down on Instagram to thank her, and she told me I could freeze some if I didn’t want to eat them all. They were gone by the end of the night.
I watched 63 episodes of Friday Night Lights in the span of twelve days. That is not an exaggeration; I actually counted. It's the most TV I’ve ever watched consecutively, a new personal record.
I ate every single meal in bed.
During those two weeks, my little white IKEA nightstand, the one I’ve had for almost ten years, the one with the scratched paint, became a landing place for nourishment. Food came in, and food went out, all from that nightstand. My husband would gather food from the porch, arrange it on a plate, and hand-deliver meals to my bedside. He brought me pizza, a turkey sandwich, more pizza. Anything I wanted. He brought me Cheez-its. An acai bowl. An M&M McFlurry. Then he’d come back through the bedroom and clear my plates, my empty cans of La Croix, my used napkins. For two weeks, as I miscarried, this is how I ate: in bed, wearing black sweatpants, nestled in a cocoon of pillows and blankets. Food appeared, and then the dishes disappeared. Like a magic trick. Like … room service.
When Brett and I first started dating, he had just graduated college and moved back in with his parents. He landed a full-time job testing video games, with a 45-minute commute each way. Every day when Brett came home from work, his dad, 72 and retired at the time, would get up from his chair to make Brett’s sandwich for the following day.
I remember teasing Brett about it a few times, that his dad made his lunch for him. But I would come to understand later, the sandwich was more about Gene than it was about Brett. The sandwich gave Gene something to do each day. And not just something to do—something to do for his son. That small gesture was rooted in love, in service.
Brett told me once, “That’s just who my dad is.”
That’s just who Brett is, too.
Brett will tell you he doesn’t consider himself a romantic. He’s not a writer. He’s not a poet. He goes by the list, only buys jewelry I pick out for myself. Travel makes him anxious. He is never going to surprise me with a trip to Paris. He’s never going to serenade me with an acoustic guitar.
Once upon a time, I would have told you that’s what I wanted in a husband—to be surprised, swept off my feet, whisked away to some glamorous place where we could have Belgian waffles delivered to our room on beautiful wooden trays. What I actually got in a husband is so much better, though: steadfastness, dependability, a willingness to bring every meal to my nightstand without so much as a single eye roll. Just like his dad, Brett presents a quiet, humble love, forever looking to serve.
I’ve always considered room service the ultimate luxury, an indulgence to be enjoyed alongside plush robes and tiny bottles of expensive shampoo. But in the midst of my miscarriage, my husband showed me a different kind of room service—one that is ordinary, full of comfort, brimming with understated romance.
The room service he offered was not grand or ritzy. There were no intricate trays, no bud vases holding fresh flowers. Every day, he simply brought me what I needed, exactly when I needed it. For as long as I live, I will never forget those two weeks. Me, watching Friday Night Lights, life and death swirling inside my body. Him, quietly and faithfully delivering food to the nightstand, and then promptly clearing the plates.
Words and photo by Ashlee Gadd.