Oh, how I tried to avoid this moment.
It’s 6:30 p.m. and I’m frantically stuffing small toys into a huge carry-on bag. In 12 hours, my husband and I will leave with our two sons — Sam, age 4, and David, 18 months — for a two-part flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Minneapolis.
For more than two years, I have successfully avoided getting on an airplane with small children. If you want to see us, we told friends and relatives, come on down. But this time, we were invited to a friend’s wedding in St. Paul. The bride, marrying into an extended family full of little kids, had made great efforts to plan a long weekend full of parties, some of them for children.
By 8 p.m., the bag is almost packed. In addition to Froot Loops, we’ve fit 18 small toys of varying distraction value, plus a few choice pieces of chewy Tupperware, baby’s favorite. I’m raiding the pantry in search of the rest of the Ninja Turtle snacks when my husband enters the room.
Frank has one of those video cameras with a little playback screen in it, which means you can watch videos on it if you don’t mind squinting. He pushes a Disney Sing Along tape into the VCR, places the camera on the coffee table just-so, turns the volume up high and tapes Disney. When we’re on the plane, he explains, the kids will be able to watch “The Lion King” on the camera’s tiny screen.
“Wanna bet that’ll save our lives?” he says.
I wouldn’t disagree, but I remind him of all the distractions my bag holds. I’m wedging eight small juice boxes into its last remaining space when my mother calls.
“Remember, don’t take the juice. It always spills.”
Having survived several trips with my older son, I know the rules for airplane travel with kids: Keep ’em swallowing on the way up, swallowing on the way down, and distracted in between. Your carry-on bag must hold enough toys and food to last a month.
My husband had been able to get us three seats across for the first leg of the journey to Cincinnati, with the baby riding our lap. My Big Bag and a supplemental diaper bag stowed safely under the seat in front of us, I make final preparations before takeoff, pouring a juice box into the baby’s cup, when the flight attendant comes up and addresses Frank, a Delta frequent flyer, by name.
“We have a seat for you in First Class,” she whispers. “Alone.”
My face freezes in horror.
“Why don’t you go?” he says to me. “It’ll give us more room. I can handle it.”
He assures me that he knows the rules about drinking at takeoff. And the boys look happy. The baby has already pulled the Airfone out of its cradle in the seat in front of him and is now working hard to replace it. Our older son seems content, for now, with the window view.
“You’d better hurry before they give it to someone else,” he says.
I run past noisy families like mine, open the curtains and step into First Class. Squealing fades to a soothing murmur. Calm, well-dressed men and women read The Wall Street Journal and Vogue. Even the preschooler in the seat in front of me sits quietly reading, poised in demeanor and free of banana stains.
I sit down and start to chat with my seatmate, a computer executive, about the merits of various laptops, his company’s fortunes, my work as a journalist. I order scrambled eggs with bearnaise sauce, fresh fruit, a bagel.
I think I look carefree.
“Stop worrying,” the flight attendant says. “Your husband is fine. Your kids are fine. Just relax while you still can.”
I try. I do. Before long, my older son comes to visit, taking my bagel and cream cheese back to his seat.
Breakfast done, I feel the obligation to share this good fortune with my husband. Walking down the aisle, I can see he has handled the situation well. David is on his lap, engrossed in Disney on the camera. Sam is occupied with a travel game. But Frank’s game face is beginning to show signs of wear.
There was, alas, no bearnaise sauce in Coach; only a wet-looking piece of cake he couldn’t bear to eat.
“There’s still time for coffee up there, if you move quickly,” I say.
As he runs, I sit and dig into the diaper bag for my next trick, only to discover the sad truth: The Juice Fairy has done her thing. The extra outfit and several cloth toys are soaked with apple juice. Good thing I brought two bags.
The boys are content enough to sit still for a book before we start our approach. Bouncing one on my lap and snuggling with the other, I prepare lollipops for the landing. Two happy, sticky boys swallow till we hit the ground.
“Excuse me,” says the woman across the aisle. “But I must tell you how wonderfully behaved your boys were throughout the flight. It’s rare that children are so quiet. You have a wonderful family.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I’ll share that with my husband.”
I beam. For one brief moment, our family has won the Gold Medal for traveling with kids.
With a mix of joy and terror, I watch Sam’s face light up as he eyes the moving walkway in the Cincinnati airport, the first he has ever seen.
This is one of those moments we travel for, I think as I hold on to a wiggling David, eager to join his older brother riding the walkway. Then I realize we have eight minutes to catch our next flight.
The flight is packed, we are among the last to board, it is clear there will be no salvation this time, no extra seat in paradise. Only reduced legroom and tired, sugared-out, restless kids. Even the grandmotherly woman across the aisle gives us dirty looks as we sit down.
The Airfone has quickly lost its allure. Toy after toy comes out of the bag and hits the floor, unreachable till the end of the flight. Froot Loops and Ninja Turtles come and go.
Kids always seem to know when parents are about to break. After an hour and a half, David stretches across us and settles in for a quick nap; Sam studies his map. My husband places his head on my shoulder. We sigh in unison.
In a few minutes, we know, the baby will scream, the juice will fly, all hell will break loose. But for this moment, we enjoy the quiet together, a family that’s Almost There.
It’s Tuesday morning, and David and I are sprawled on the floor of the Minneapolis airport waiting for the long trip home to begin. He’s groping through my remaining, juice-free, 43-pound carry-on bag, in search of amusement or nutrition.
His eyes light up as he extracts the bag of lollipops. “No,” I say. He wails.
No time for a power struggle.
His bright eyes light up again as I take the paper off a lollipop and hand it to him. In minutes, sugar has coated his hands, arms and face.
We board.
“Sticky baby coming through,” I warn passengers as I make my way down the aisle, holding my smiling, coated David as high as I can. Most passengers smile; a few look away in disgust.
I go through my routine: wipe off the kid, wipe off the Airfone. The last of the Froot Loops keeps them both occupied as we take off.
Before long, the flight attendant parks the beverage cart next to me and admires the ingenuity of the traveling VCR. Frank beams. In his professional life, he has been awarded eight patents; yet at this moment, he knows this is his finest invention.
The flight attendant rewards us, placing a tall stack of sweet biscuits on my tray that will, no doubt, hold us through landing. Turns out she’s a mother herself; she has flown many miles in our seats.
Our connecting flight is the final flight. The last journey. The end of a crazed road. We take off and the boys happily gobble cold fries. My husband and I can do little more than shake our heads. Then, maybe it’s the lack of sleep or sanity or the impending relief of our home, but we can’t help but smile.
See, our kids spent this four-day weekend in sheer glee. They kissed a happy bride. They rode every kiddie ride at Mall of America. They ate all the pizza and fries they wanted.
They romped with kids from all over the country under big trees. They went napless in Minneapolis, and they loved every minute of it.
And, we realize, we did too. It wasn’t relaxing, but it was fun. They were fun. We were traveling parents.
The flight attendants on the last leg of our flight seem to sense our exhaustion. Beverage service finished, the saintly Denise takes Sam into the flight attendants’ compartment, lets him try out the seat and answers every question: What do the eight different buttons on the microphone do? Where are the peanuts and the cookies stored? Why must he never, never touch those red handles on the doors?
The little tour concluded, Denise hands Sam the microphone and lets him quickly say hello to me over the airplane’s public address system. She mentions his name in her final instructions before landing.
As our greasy, sticky, happy little family makes its way out of the airplane, Sam high-fives the flight attendants and the pilots and says to each of them:
“Nice flying!”
