Adventures In Flying

My family and I are attending an out-of-state wedding in October, so I booked our flights last week.  I haven't been on a plane since March of 2009, when I was three months pregnant with Jagger and we went to California so I could be with my mother, sister and brother for the anniversary of my father's passing.  When I reached my sixth month of pregnancy, my obstetrician ordered me not to travel too far.  Orson Welles once said, "There are only two emotions in a plane: boredom and terror."  Poor Mr. Welles.  Perhaps his problem was that he placed too much emphasis on the ride itself instead of the destination.  Surely, he never flew with a baby.  As for myself, I have a special fondness for the invention known as an airplane.

Coming To America

My new life in America began with  a trip in an airplane in 1976.  At the age of six, my mother, sister, brother and I boarded an international flight from the Philippines to America to reunite with my father, who had gone ahead a year earlier to establish a home for us.  Prior to boarding, the pilot of the Philippine Airlines plane first had to undertake a special mission:  to carry my younger sister onto the airplane.  My mother had her hands full with my one-year old brother.  When my sister, who was only three at the time, saw the jumbo jet, she planted her bottom on the ground just outside the portable stairs leading into the cabin and refused to board.  Fortunately this was long before 9/11, so her demonstration was considered "cute" rather than a potential act of terrorism. 

Imagine how challenging it is to take care of a baby during a flight.  Multiply this by three.  Add the transcontinental factor.  The fact that we were leaving our extended family for an indefinite period of time to move to a foreign country raised the emotional toll of the trip exponentially.  This gives you an idea of how difficult that flight must have been for my mother.  Fortunately, she met a very sweet Canadian couple on the flight who offered to watch me so that my mother could focus on my brother and sister.  At least she was able to subtract some of the stress, and seeing my father again after year apart with limited telephone contact was well worth all of it.   

What Not To Wear

We took a fair number of trips by airplane when I was growing up to attend weddings or go on vacations.  Once my cousin from Texas sent me a ticket so I could visit her. It was my first flight alone.  I was a goofy teenager and had just watched a movie where the heroine wore high heels and a short skirt on a flight.  I thought it seemed sophisticated and worthy of imitation, so I put together a little get up that  included high heeled pumps.  Having been accustomed to wearing little white Keds and having had very little experience in heels, I had a difficult time walking.  To make things worse, back then carry on bags did not have the little wheels that make them easy to tote around now.  Teetering on high heels while a heavy bag hung from my left shoulder, I walked more slowly than an 80-year old with a cane.  It took me so long to get from point A to point B that I missed my connecting flight. 

Look Homeward, Angel

After I moved to Maryland I flew to California around three to four times each year.  My memories of those trips back home are very happy ones.  Being away from my family was hard, but each visit home was special.  I am certain that I was able to be that far away from my family only because I knew they were only a six-hour plane ride away.  Looking back on it, I wish I had gone home more frequently.  But I was young and felt like I was on an adventure of sorts;  at that age I didn't think about the fact that my immediate family was on the cusp of dispersing.  Soon, my brother would join the Navy and leave for another state as well, and my sister would finish college and settle down where she found a teaching job.  My father would take an early retirement, and he and my mother would begin their empty nest years.  Although I was able to fly home, I couldn't ever really go "home" again.  Times were changing.  After I finished law school and got a job, it became harder and harder to take time off to fly back home.  And then after I got married there were two work schedules to accomodate, and visits tapered off to twice a year -- once during the summer and another time during the holidays. 

Headline News

It wasn't just our work schedules kept me from flying back home.  Randy and I wanted to do some traveling before we started a family.  Our first vacation as a married couple was our honeymoon in the French West Indies (with a stopover in Florida).  We were seated near the wing on our flight out.  At one point Randy leaned over me to look out the window and commented on an unusual brown fluid on the wing.  A few moments later the pilot announced that the hydraulic fluid on the plane was leaking and we had to make an emergency landing in Puerto Rico.  Ever the fatalist, I immediately began to imagine that Randy and I would be the newlywed couple whose tragic and early demise would be the subject of Katie Couric's feature on the Today show.  In every plane crash there seems to be a newlywed couple off to start their new life together when tragedy strikes, and they sink to the bottom of the ocean, holding hands in death, their wedding bands serving as the means by which they are identified by recovery crews.  It would be a cruel and ironic death, the story used to illustrate the truism that you never know when it's your time.  Fortunately, that was not our time.  We landed in Puerto Rico, where emergency response teams were waiting for us on the runway.  The plane had lost so much fluid that there wasn't even enough to power the door.  The plane was not immediately reparable, so we had to continue our trip on another plane.  The flight attendants knew we were on our way to our honeymoon, and they compensated us with a nice bottle of champagne.

Flying With SARS

Randy caused a bit of a panic when we flew out to Puerto Vallarta on vacation in 2003.  It was the summer of the SARS epidemic, when people were dying after catching a dangerous strain of the flu.  Right before our flight, it  was announced in the news that the Center for Disease Control believed the virus originated in Asia.  As a precaution on our flight. Randy decided to don a surgical mask to cover his nose and mouth.  I opted not to wear the mask he had brought for me because it made my face sweat.  We were one of the first people to board the flight, so as others boarded, they saw Randy in his get up. Seeing a random man wearing a surgical mask sitting next to an Asian woman evidently set the bells off in many passengers' minds, and soon the plane was abuzz with nervous chatter about the SARS virus.  Feeling somewhat like a leper, I nudged Randy hard with my elbow and pleaded with him to remove his mask or risk a mutiny on the plane.  Some people even asked us point blank if he was wearing the mask because of SARS.  Eventually he became uncomfortable with the attention and he took it off.  If you ever want to get a lot of attention, put on a surgical mask and take along an Asian woman when there is a potentially life threatening strain of the flu that originated in Asia.

Let's Go Paris!

We planned a trip to Paris before I discovered that I was pregnant with Skyler.  Although I would be unable to drink wine or eat cheese, we decided to go ahead and take the trip, predicting (correctly as it turns out) that our ability to travel would be severely curtailed after we had a baby.  My goal on that flight was simple:  to be as close to the lavatory as possible.  One symptom of pregnancy is the frequent need to urinate.  So mine was a good goal to achieve, because  I spent what seems like the entire flight in the bathroom.  That trip was special for a couple of reasons.  First, I had always wanted to go to Paris.  Second, even though we only had to buy two plane tickets, it felt like there were three of us on that trip.  I was only four months pregnant, but our baby was already the most important thing in the world to us, and we talked a lot about our baby (we didn't know we were having a girl).  It felt like I was seeing Paris for the first time with my baby.  Skyler reads about Paris in some of her books, and she shows a lot of interest in it, so I promised her that we would take her there for her 14th birthday and we would sing happy birthday to her atop the Eiffel Tower.

A Different Kind Of Carry-On

Skyler took her first flight when she was six months old.  We went to California in May of 2005 to visit my family.  My mother came to Maryland to help us after Skyler was born, but my my father had yet to meet Skyler, and his birthday was in May, so I had the idea of taking Skyler out ot him as a birthday present.  Nothing makes a person feel more like a responsible adult than flying cross-country alone with a six-month old baby.  Security was tight already at the time because of 9/11.  I went through security with my diaper bag, which doubled as my purse, extra bag of toys, breast pump, baby sling, and stroller.  I had to put all of the items through the conveyor belt, including the Baby Bjorn, remove my shoes, and fold up the stroller, all while holding Skyler. On the first flight I held her in my lap. That was difficult only because there was so little room for moving around.  Skyler was an easy baby, though.  She maintained her regular eating and sleeping schedule.  I took out brand new toys to keep her distracted and walked up and down the aisle when permitted in order to lull her to sleep.  It was a surprisingly easy flight.  When I needed to go to the bathroom I just kept her in her sling attached to me.  Southwest Airlines doesn't have changing tables in the lavatory, so the flight attendants set up a makeshift changing area on the floor in the front of the plane.  The most awkward part of that flight came when I needed to pump breastmilk.  I don't know what possessed me to think that I could use my battery-operated breastpump while in mid-air (I had a non-stop flight).  Like I said, Skyler was in my lap.  Needless to say, there was no privacy.  Fortunately, the gentleman sitting next to me had just had his first baby, too, and his wife was nursing their baby (albeit in the comfort of her own home).  So, I simply covered up with a blanket and nursed Skyler for a little while and then used the pump single-handed.

Caution: Barfing Baby Ahead

As Skyler got older, flying became both easier and more difficult.  I bought her her own seat, had to bring more complicated toys to keep her interested, and it was more difficult to change her as she became mobile.  Still, she was good flier.  I also learned that I could use her to try to discourage passengers from sitting next to us on flights that weren't full so that we could have the entire row to ourselves.  For example, because we were permitted to board first because I had a young child, we had our pick of seats.  To discourage people from sitting next to us, I would have Skyler make a lot of noise as other passengers were boarding, in hopes of having people think she would be noisy on the plane so they would avoid sitting next to us.  One businesswoman didn't take heed, though.  She sat at the window seat next to Skyler.  She took out her laptop to do work, and Skyler, thinking it was a dvd player, ever so gently reached over and positioned it so she could have a better view of the screen.  What could I do but shrug my shoulders at the woman.  On another occasion, I told Skyler to hold a barf bag near her face, thinking that if people thought she was prone to motion sickness they would let us have the entire row of seats to ourselves.  That worked.  Sneaky, I know, but if you've ever flown on a plane with a child, you understand the desperate measures one takes in order to be more comfortable.

Family Vacation

One of the happiest times in my life was when Randy, Skyler and I went to Cancun, Mexico,  on vacation with my parents.  It was a long and crowded flight, but the excitement overtook us, and the all-inclusive resort where we spent a week was well worth it.  It's always sad to end a vacation, and the flight back home was slightly more nightmarish, mostly because the airport in Cancun seemed totally chaotic, prompting my father to shake his head in disgust and say to Randy, "This airport is no good."  He was a seasoned traveller himself.  Despite the hassle, I am so grateful to have taken that trip, as it was the last vacation I would ever go on with my father before he died. 

Frequent Flyers

By the time Skyler was four years old she had been aboard a total of 40 airplanes.  She received frequent flyer ticket from Southwest when she was only three years old.  She knew how to give the safety demonstrations that the flight attendants give at the beginning of each flight.  She understood the diagrams on the emergency landing pamphlet at the back of each seat.  I knew she had become a seasoned flyer when at the age of three she knew to take off her toy jewelry and purse, place them in a bin on the conveyor belt, and remove her shoes before going through the metal detector, her arms outstretched so as to reveal her weapon-free torso. 

The longest flight Skyler ever took was to Bulgaria for Gergana's wedding ,where she was a flower girl.  It was  17-hour flight, with two plane changes, one in Frankfurt, Germany, and the other in Switzerland.  We expected the trip to be a nightmare with a 2 1/2 year old, but with a portable dvd player and Skyler's favorite DVDs, new coloring books and crayons, and a few new toys, she did exceedingly well.  I think flying is in her blood.

Enjoying the Ride

The flight out to attend the wedding will be Jagger's first airplane experience.  We are very excited to see a lot of family members that we don't get to see very often anymore.  It will be the first time Jagger will meet most of his extended family.  We are leaving just a couple of days before his first birthday, so we will have a small birthday celebration at our destination, and our flight home will be on the evening of his birthday.  For all of these reasons, this flight will mark the beginning of a special celebration.  God willing, it will be just the first of many flights we take together as a family. 

Sorry, Mr. Welles, but you got it all wrong.  Flying these days is not terrifying.  In an airplane, when you're en route to your destination, it is easy to forget for a few hours the fact that you are in a man-made machine defying the laws of gravity and travelling at a rate of speed that at which perhaps human beings were never intended to move. And flying is anything but boring.  Even in the days before a scheduled flight everyone's emotions begin to bubble over with excitement.  Flying is a prelude to joyful reunions, new experiences, relaxing vacations, and sometimes even the fulfillment of lifelong dreams.