Leaving...On a Jet Plane

I’ve been praying off and on since last night. Praying more than usual. You see, I’m getting on a plane this afternoon with Noah and Rowan to fly to Massachusetts. And I don’t like to fly.

For one, I’m terrified. Not of plummeting to my death, mind you (well, actually, that too), but of throwing up. I have a grave case of vomit phobia. And although I’ve only vomited four times in my entire 39 years, and never at 37,000 feet, I’m still terrified I’ll throw up on the plane in one of those crinkly, plastic-lined “in case of motion discomfort” bags. Ever time the plane dips or shudders or lurches I panic and am instantly overcome with nausea. My feet sweat, my heart pounds, I get clammy all over, I frantically adjust the air blower. That’s usually about when the kids start making requests, and I respond abruptly, “Ssshhhhhh!!!! Mommy’s concentrating!” “Concentrating on what?” Noah will ask, as I focus on the tray table and deep-breathe like Darth Vader.

The second reason I hate to fly is that I am now getting my “just desserts,” as the saying goes. You see, before I had kids of my own, I was 100 percent intolerant of any child on any airplane. No, I did not want to play peek-a-book or make silly faces at the three-year-old peering over the seat in front of me. No, I did not want to suffer through the piercing screams of the infant in 6A. I didn’t care one bit if his ears hurt. And I could not, for one second, tolerate my seat being kicked or the tray table being latched and unlatched with a thump and a jar on my seatback. On one flight I even went so far as to reprimand the child sitting behind me. I wheeled around and spat at the six-year-old, "Do not even think of kicking my seat again or you will live to regret it."

No lie.

This is why flying with my own children is an act of divine justice.

There was the time Noah, as toddler, screamed so loudly on a 7 a.m. flight that the attendant marched down the aisle, leaned over Brad and me, and hissed directly to Noah: “Young man! There are passengers trying to sleep on this flight!” I’m not proud to admit that I was so mortified and so angry – mostly at the flight attendant but also at my child – that I pinched Noah on the thigh. Which only made him scream louder, of course.

Then there was the infamous neck incident.

We were flying home from the Florida Keys after a week’s vacation with my in-laws (It must be said that traveling from Lincoln to Big Pine Key, and vice versa, is nothing short of hellacious. Traveling to East Timor would be easier). We were spending the night in what turned out to be the mangiest hotel in Fort Lauderdale, perhaps all of Florida. Let me put it like this: upon turning down the bedspread I found cigarette ashes on the sheets, and the color of the water spurting out of the bathtub faucet could only be described as puce.

After a fitful night (we had reserved a crib for Rowan, who was barely one at the time, but of course when we arrived at the hotel, no cribs were available. In the middle of the night Rowan actually rolled out of bed and landed on his back with a soft poof onto the pillows we had piled on the floor), we were jolted awake around 5:30 a.m. by Noah’s screaming. At first we couldn’t figure out what was wrong – he was screaming so incessantly he couldn’t even verbalize the problem. But we finally pieced together that he was in excruciating pain. He couldn’t even move his head without screaming.

Carrying him out to the parking lot where our rental van was parked was like carrying a four-foot piece of plywood. He was stiff, unable to turn his head even a fraction of an inch. And still screaming. After several attempts to fold his wooden body into the car seat, we gave up and called an ambulance. Both Brad and I were stricken with fear, thoughts of meningitis and worse, more catastrophic diagnoses running through our heads.

After a round of detailed questioning at the hospital, Noah still whimpering and sitting upright like a ventriloquist doll in my lap, the nurse administered a strong does of Motrin. And lo and behold, twenty minutes later, Noah was turning his head like a barn owl.

The diagnosis: a stiff neck. That’s right, we had strapped our kid into an ambulance, sirens blaring, tearing through the streets of Fort Lauderdale, for a stiff neck.

We still talk about the $500 stiff neck today; Noah loves to hear the story.

Later that morning as we flew out of Fort Lauderdale, Rowan screamed and thrashed as I struggled to hold him on my lap. I began to weep pitifully. “I don’t think I’m going to make it,” I told Brad. His response: “You need to get it together. Right. Now.” I wept harder.

That was the moment I enacted the two-year moratorium on air travel. I walked into our house in Lincoln, picked up the phone and dialed my parents. “You’ll need to come to Nebraska if you want to see us in the next two years,” I told them. “I’m done with flying.” We stuck with it, too. It was at least 18 months before I stepped foot on an airplane with my two children again.

So you see, this is really a long and convoluted explanation of why I’ve been praying like a feverish evangelical for the past 24 hours. I don’t like to fly. I don’t like to fly with my children. Only God can help me keep my sanity in this case.




As a side note, tune in on Monday for a guest post by my husband, Brad. He’s good. You’ll laugh. But my readership stats better not skyrocket, that’s all I have to say.