|
January 14, 2007 ~ Dante Forgot One Circle of Hell
Sunday.
So. We traveled three time zones away. With a one-year old. For a month. It was a lot of fun, and a wonderful trip, but... with the jetlag, new environment, and unstructured days, his routine was irreparably broken, so that he was going to bed very late and sleeping very badly every night, and rarely taking good naps. We did many exhausting things of course, and he was with his grandparents, during the holidays, when they have lots and lots and lots of sweets around the house, and this is the set of grandparents who rarely get to see him and so are prone to heap affection on him for the short time they have with him (and I really can't deny them that right). So inevitably, his diet was not exactly the paragon of health.
With that combination of bad diet and stress and lack of sleep, a surefire recipe for a weakened immune system, we boarded a jet so crowded that it had not a single empty seat.
So I had a squirmy one-year-old (on the verge of walking so always wants to be exploring and moving) confined to my lap. For five hours. Cranky, after getting up at three a.m. Without the backup of another adult traveling with me. I could fit only a finite number of toys and treats and books to distract him in my carry-on, and he would not sleep in my lap, because he was in a strange and noisy place.
I spent the entire flight deeply engaged with him, talking with him, reading to him, playing with him, and frequently nursing him. He squirmed a lot, yes, but I kept him confined to my seat so he didn't bother anyone else, and he made a little noise and cried some a few times, but even an angel baby would fuss in his situation. They were five extremely challenging hours, and I was exhausted by the end of it and so desperate for something to distract him that I was letting him eat a napkin.
As if to make things even more difficult, the guy in the seat next to me made it obvious that he hates babies. His disappointment when I arrived at his row carrying said one-year-old was palpable as he sunk lower in his seat and sighed. And every time I nursed Grove, the man looked exceedingly uncomfortable and shifted and sighed and looked pointedly away while still throwing glares at me. I contained myself from yelling, "HEY, JERK, WOULD YOU RATHER HOLD HIM FOR ME WHILE HE SCREAMS AND CRIES AND KICKS SINCE NURSING IS THE ONE THING THAT IS SURE TO CALM HIM? I'M SO SORRY TO MAKE YOU TOO UNCOMFORTABLE TO IGNORE US AND READ YOUR NEW YORK TIMES!" I knew that I was doing the very best that I could and that Grove was being better behaved than could be expected of him, and I was being very discreet nursing, so if that guy was still so disgruntled, I couldn't really care less.
We finally got to the Atlanta airport for our transfer. I put the backpack full of twenty-five pounds of baby distractions plus five pounds of laptop on my back, slung my ten-pound camera bag over my shoulder, plus the water bottle and the baby sling, and I shoved my boarding passes in a pocket, then picked up the squirmy twenty-five pound baby in my arms because the sling won't work with all the other crap strapped to me. We trudged a mile through the hot Atlanta airport. The Atlanta airport is always too crowded and too hot.
Our destination was the tiny concourse for the prop planes that you go out on the tarmac to board, the concourse that only a relative few people traveling regionally see, so it hasn't been renovated in a long long time. It isn't big enough for the number of people who use it. In every seating area, there are several broken seats that they haven't fixed, so I knew I wouldn't be able to let Grove down to explore while waiting for our flight because there are sharp exposed metal brackets everywhere. This concourse is always extremely dirty. Discarded fast food wrappers and soda bottles overflow the bins and come spilling out into the isles. These eddies of trash are brushed to the side by passersby, swept into drifts by each gate's seating alcove. None of the restaurants have seating areas, and there are only two vegetarian options in the entire concourse--no vegan options at all.
I realized two things. One, on the last plane, I had forgotten the little snack pack that I'd been saving to eat when I had a free hand (Hahahahahaha! ha!!) since Delta no longer serves meals on long flights since they are going bankrupt, so I'd have to try to find something to eat in this godforsaken concourse in hell--I mean, the Atlanta airport. Two, our flight had been delayed. Indefinitely. The flight crew was "missing." Apparently, this happens often here, at "the world’s busiest passenger airport." And the electronics in the cabin of our small propeller plane (lights, PA system) were mysteriously not working according to the harried woman at the desk. How comforting. I noted, with an inward smirk, that a placard by the waiting area read, "Our mission is to be the world's best airport by exceeding customer expectations!" Ahem. Why, they were exceeding my expectations, now, weren't they? This airport was far, far worse than I expected!
Our gate was being used for two other flights, so there were no free seats in the waiting area. So I walked. With my squirmy baby and my bag and my camera equipment and my other random accoutrements. (My upper-body strength has increased tenfold over the past year). Before getting something to eat, I realized that I really needed to go to the bathroom. I walked all the way to the end of the concourse to find that the bathroom was closed for renovations. So I walked all the way to the other end of the concourse, and that bathroom was excessively crowded and dirty, with a trail of paper towels drifting out of the door, and I wondered how I was going to go to the bathroom without setting Grove or my bags on the dirty, dirty floor. (How to tackle public peeing with a one-year-old in tow is not one of those problems I had really considered before having a child. As I waited in line, I contemplated all of those years that I had spent blissfully unaware of how ridiculously mundane tasks could become Olympic challenges with a child in tow).
I waited for the handicapped stall, hoping for a little more room. I left everything on my back and was about to sit on the toilet with Grove in my lap when I realized that I couldn't possibly get my elastic-waisted pants down while holding him. I temporarily set Grove down on his feet and tried to keep him distracted so that he wouldn't get down on the floor, pulled down my pants, sat, let him grip my knees for balance, and started to pee.
It was at that vulnerable moment when Grove dropped to the floor and started crawling as fast as he could under the divider between my stall and my neighbor's. "NO! No no no!" I yelled, and he looked at me, laughed, and kept going.
I grabbed his ankle, he started crying, and I finished fast, pulled up my pants, picked him up, realized that the automatically flushing toilet had not flushed. I looked for the tiny manual button while trying to keep Grove's now-filthy hands away from his mouth.
Trying to wash one's hands while holding a squirming, crying one-year-old is an adventure in gymnastics. After that painful ordeal, I washed his hands thoroughly as well, then took him over to change his diaper. I quickly realized that there was no changing table. Great.
So I laid him down on the counter next to the sinks, pinned him down because he wanted to go exploring, and changed his diaper. Then, of course, came the washing of the hands while holding a screaming one-year-old ordeal, part two.
Exhausted, but finally with an empty bladder and a dry-diapered baby, I got a greasy cheese pizza, and it was delicious because I was ravenous. I sat on the carpeted floor by a window overlooking the tarmac and gave little pieces of pizza to Grove while he stared wide-eyed at the planes and flaggers and baggage carts and security cars and refueling trucks.
For the next two and a half hours I tried to confine fussy Grove to the four square feet of carpet next to the window, my little slightly-less-dirty and not-too-dangerous real estate claim. He wanted very badly to crawl around and explore, and he got very, very frustrated with my restrictions. He left many, many prints on the glass of the window. I listened to further delays to our flight over the PA system. I tried to keep Grove from grabbing people's feet around us, though, mercifully, they were amused when he got them, rather than angry.
Finally, finally, we boarded our flight. Grove nursed during take-off, and fell into an exhausted sleep. The woman across the aisle keeps offering to hold him, "Can I hold him for you?" and I tried to quietly say (terrified that he would wake up), "No, no, he's sleeping. Thanks." I was exhausted, but couldn't sleep or I'd drop him, so I looked out the window as the hills near Atlanta turned into the Blue Ridge Mountains of home, and an hour later I regretfully woke him when it was time to deplane.
It turns out the fine folks in Atlanta didn't transfer his carseat with the rest of our luggage, so the airport gave us one. A very sketchy-looking one, so we used his old rear-facing one instead. I just wanted to get home. I was so very glad to see Morgan. The cheerful greetings of the dogs sent joy thrumming through my heart.
I slept well that night, and the next day was beautiful with snow, and we were very happy. That night, though, shortly after midnight, Grove woke beside me crying and crying, and I could not calm him. Then he vomited all over me and the bed and himself. Oh. That explains a lot.. And about the time I got myself and the bed and him all cleaned up, he did it again. And again. and again. He was sick all night and all the next day and thank God for nursing or else he wouldn't have held anything down, and then came the diarrhea. And I got sick too, but I didn't throw up, thankfully; I was just nauseous and dizzy with a fever. Thankfully, the illness is fast, and we were both feeling fine two days later. His first ever illness was over.
(Then Morgan got it. Which is very unfair, considering he got a virus very similar the week before on his flight home, poor man).
But now, less than a week after the flight, Grove came down with an awful cold, also most likely from the plane, and he can barely breathe, and he's not sleeping at night, and the cough is just awful and I know that I'm in for several more days of this.
Lordy. We're paying now for his year of perfect health, my friends.
|
|
