I’ve been thinking about parenting dilemmas these days. I’m
confronted with them on a daily basis – minor things here and there… and now that the girls are getting older –
bigger and more complicated ones as well. One funny matter that has been
replaying itself in my head was a conundrum I faced a while back when
travelling home to Seattle from Southern CA.
Have you ever traveled with children? With a baby? With a
toddler? With OWEN? It’s not fun. Or easy. If ever you had the time and ability
to watch a family of six traverse the obstacles of an airport, you’d probably
laugh. Or sigh and think, thank everloving God that’s not me. John takes the
majority on his shoulders. Literally. He carries a carseat on his shoulders. He
carries a backpack on his shoulders. And in addition, both hands are carrying
and/or wheeling other items. The girls zig this way and that with their roll-on
suitcases. And Owen gets wheeled at top speed in his stroller. By the time we
make it on to the plane, we have already gone through security, which requires
breaking down the stroller and putting it back together, taking 12 shoes off 12
feet then getting them back on again, making sure 75 different items get on the
conveyer belt and back into our possession… all within 25 seconds. After that
ordeal I’m already sweaty and want a nap. But that is merely the warm-up for
what’s in store… After waiting around and exhausting the attention spans of
each child while the plane gets prepared to board, it’s then time to get on the
plane. They let the families with small children board first because they know
what a circus it is and they want to spare the other passengers the risk and
reality of being whacked upside the head with a carseat being carried on
somebody’s shoulders, who is also carrying at least 47 other items. For some
reason they always put us in the very back of the plane – our party of six…
There must be a little box they check when we come to the counter to retrieve
our tickets that says: Code Red - This Family At the Back of the Bus. They Look
Loud and Frazzled. Repeat: BACK OF THE BUS. Once we pour ourselves into the entire row on
both sides of the aisle and get settled, the fun part is watching the
expressions of the people who have to sit directly in front of us. Because they
know in short order what their flight will entail. And I know, too. I give them
apologetic smiles.
The return flight is much more difficult than the arrival
flight, usually. This is because at this point we have already had a fun-filled
and exhausting week – a week of long nights, many activities, and missed naps.
Tempers are running high, and our little family is a delicate bomb just waiting
to detonate.
This was the predicament we were in on one of our recent
trips home from SoCal. We had made it on to the plane. I was attempting to
occupy Owen with tasty snacks until the plane took off. We burned through
cheddar bunnies, yogurt melts, and fruit snacks in what felt like 4 seconds. I
went on to phase 2 from my entertainment bag of tricks: toys. He threw the play
phone on the floor almost immediately, shoved the soft book with the stimulating
textures right back in my face, and wouldn’t even so much as look at his fire
engine truck. I went directly to phase 3, which I’ll admit is more of the
emergency phase which involves picking random items from my purse and trying to
make them seem enticing. He played with my keys for a quality amount of time.
He also had some fun sucking on my phone and whacking it against the window
shade, which you could tell in his estimation, made a pretty sweet
loud/obnoxious sound that he fully appreciated. But then nothing would amuse
him… not the empty gum package, not a return play session with the keys, not my
comb, and certainly not any of the in-flight reading material. We hadn’t even
taken off when the fussing began. The fussing quickly escalated into ticked off
wails. And everything went downhill from there.
Time takes on a different quality when you are in the air
with a ticked off toddler. When the pilot came over the speaker and said, “we
will be touching down in Seattle in just about 2 and a half hours,” he may as
well have said, “yo Kim…you will be up here in this claustrophobic vessel for
eternity.”
Owen was buckled snugly in his carseat, which gave him the
perfect distance to take his baby nikes and fire off a steady stream of kicks
onto the upright tray table in front of him. I held his feet and told him to
stop, but my pleas fell on deaf ears. I figure I intercepted 50% of the kicks
he dealt out… which meant the passenger sitting directly in front of Owen felt
the other 50.
When the lady came by with the drink cart I heard the poor
soul sitting in front of Owen ask for a scotch. And then he changed it to a
double scotch.
“I’m so sorry,” I said between the seats to the back of his
head and thick neck.
“You are so patient,” I offered.
I didn’t know how
this would be received. I’ve had people look at me with a quite a lot of
irritation and disdain in these situations. I’ve had people look at my rascally
babies like they were the spawn of the devil. I’ve also had people who were
wonderful – who have smiled and told funny stories about “their kids when they
were that age.” At this point I didn’t know what I was dealing with.
The man’s head turned to the side and I saw a big smile
through the space of the two seats. “Hey,” he said, “Get yourself a drink – you
need one more than I do. It’s on me.” To emphasize this point, Owen cried a little
harder and gave the man’s chair a few good kicks.
I told him no thanks, but was so grateful for his kindness
and patience. I always make a vow to myself when these things happen. That I
will always try to be *that* person in the future. The one that will turn
around and smile at the mom with the kids that are going haywire and say, “you
got this mama.” And I’ll offer to buy her a drink, too.
I checked the time on my phone, which seemed to be dripping
off the minutes in slow motion. When I realized we still had a good solid hour+
of airtime, and Owen was nowhere near ending his fussing/crying, I decided to
do the final thing in my bag of tricks: nurse him. This is usually a surefire
way to comfort him, so I pulled him out of his carseat, got him all ready… and
then realized I didn’t have a blanket or cover. I’m always impressed with the
moms who will nurse anywhere anytime without covers or concern about what other
people see or say or think. I’m the mom with the big ol’ tarp – the “hooter
hider” it’s called. I’m the one using the hooter hider in the sweltering summer
heat, and I’m the one who was really wishing I had packed it for the plane
because I had nothing. Owen knew he was about to be nursed, so there was no
turning back. And so I went for it. Boobs went flying this way and that,
despite my efforts to keep everything concealed by my cardigan sweater. And
then something lovely happened… Owen fell asleep. Quiet descended on the plane.
Peace permeated into the tray tables and window shades and airplane seats. A
collective “thank you Jesus” sigh could be heard throughout the rows and
aisles. No matter that he had fallen asleep nursing and I felt exposed to each
passenger that walked by to reach the bathrooms behind us. I wouldn’t dare or
dream of moving him while he slept for fear that he’d wake up and the crying
would begin again.
And so we flew through the air for some time just like that.
In joyful sweet silence with Owen attached to my boob. And here comes the crux
of the story – the true conundrum. For some reason that I will never know, in
his sleep Owen clenched his jaw and bit my boob so hard that I thought he had
bit the whole thing clean off. Have you
ever had your boob bitten? If you have not, I will tell you – it hurts really
really badly, as I’m sure you could pretty well imagine. Did I scream out? Did
I yank his clenched jaw from my body? Well hell no I didn’t because that would
have woken him up. In that short amount of time it took for me to process the
pain, I made a very quick and important decision: do not move a muscle, or he
will wake up. I took a deep breath and waited for his little mouth with the
razor sharp teeth to relax without making a peep, or flinching a muscle.
And that my friends, is parenting in a nutshell.
