Enjoy Your Flight? As If!

On Friday I flew back to Hawaii with the kids.

All five of them. By myself.

Not the best day of my career, as you can imagine.

On the plus side, we did all arrive safely, still breathing and with all our appendages still attached. And our luggage even all made it too!

But it was a long tough day.

When the pilot says on his announcement, "We hope you enjoy your flight with us," I just want to laugh out loud. Does ANYONE enjoy a flight EVER? Much less an nonstop eight-hour flight with a bunch of whining children!

The funniest thing, though, was the impression we made getting ON the plane. As you know, strollers and carts must, of course, be abandoned at the gate, and all carry-on bags and babies must be physically carried onto the plane and down the narrow aisle.

This is no mean feat when we’ve got two carseats, two toddlers, and six bags. (That’s one per PERSON, thank you, Ms. Disapproving Flight Attendant who glared at my luggage cart while we waited and said, “And WHICH of these will you be checking, ma’am?”)

And when one of the toddlers in question is what we call “transitionally challenged,” it really makes things interesting.

(Baby Girl does not do well with changes, to put it mildly. She actually had a fit at the petting zoo each time we moved from one animal to another. Seriously! It was like: “No no NO! I can’t leave the GOATS! I LOVE the goats! The goats are the best EVER! NOOOOOOO! ARRGGHH!!” Then one minute later: “Oh, a NEW animal! What’s this? Fish? Oh WOW! FISH! I love the fish! The fish are the BEST!” Until we had to move on to the chickens….)

So getting on the plane, we already have one guaranteed screaming fit coming, in addition to the fun of trying not to hit people in the face with our bags and carseats while walking down the aisle that’s already almost too narrow for my body. (Not that I’m the most svelte on earth, but still. Would it KILL them to make the aisle a tad wider?)

Therefore you can just picture the reaction we’re getting from everyone already seated as we’re walking on the plane. I admit, I waited until most people were already boarded before we got on, mostly because it took me that long to gather everyone and everything up once they called Group 3. But there’s also this consideration: Why would I want to spend more time trapped in this airborne prison with all these kids than I really HAVE to? And I doubt anyone else wants me to either.

But the horrified looks were almost comical as we’re squeezing down the aisle with all our stuff while Baby Girl screams, squirms, and kicks, and Baby Boy runs cheerfully ahead (at least SOMEONE was co-operative!). I said to the plane at large, “She’ll calm down in a minute,” but no one seemed particularly reassured. You can almost hear the silent prayers going up: "Please don't let them sit by me! Please don't let them sit by me!"

On the first flight, some poor woman was seated right in the middle of our block of seats. She fled to the back of the plane in horror, finding another seat since the flight was not full.

A lady seated in front of us on our connecting flight was not so lucky. As I was working on getting the carseats strapped in and the babies corralled until they could be seated, she raised her hand and asked the flight attendant if she and her sister could possibly move. She was informed that all the other seats were taken.

I sympathized with her; I would have moved away from us too, if I could.

But I will say that most everyone was really nice, and on both flights someone got up to help us, which I REALLY appreciated. On the second one it was a man from first class, who got up to help me carry stuff and traveled all the way to the very back of the plane, where he even helped me tighten the seatbelts on the carseats. He was really great.

And kudos to the flight attendant who defused the situation with Ms. Can-I-Please-Move by striking up a conversation with her about how brave it is of these young mothers nowadays to travel alone with so many children, actually prompting Ms. CIPM to turn around and ask sympathetically if she could help me. I’m sure that saved the twins some nasty glares later; I tried really hard to keep them from kicking the seats and screeching, but it’s difficult for two-year-olds to sit still for so long and I wasn’t always successful.

Later I heard that my mother and her friend had prayed for me that morning, specifically that someone would help me with the carseats. I was amazed at that!

So maybe it’s not TOO much of an exaggeration to say it was a miracle we survived the flight!

This is in the play area at the Dallas airport.

(And thank God there WAS a play area, since we had a five-hour layover!)