I was last home four years ago for Christmas. Since them I've moved across the country, gained and lost a handful of jobs, become a father, and lived in three different apartments. Family and friend (just the one) have visited sparsely since we live roughly two thousand miles from my old life. I love my rural home state and the people in it but we never make it out there. We have no money, and when we do it's spent on more localized things. Plane tickets are expensive and there's always something we've been wanting instead nipping at our ankles.
My grandmother put the trip together, as always. She makes the arrangements and I am only too happy to carry them out. One day she will call and ask about a series of dates a couple of months away, and I play professional and say I'll have to double-check but they should be fine. This is courtesy on her part and formality on mine--I'll make sure the dates work. I've put in two weeks notice without hesitation to make one of her trips.
This trip was handled by a woman at the travel agency my grandma has a vague association with. She either owns or owned it and all of our travel arrangements go through there. I contacted Judy (who I may have met in person, I can never remember) and she always sounds like she expects my call. Whenever I contact the agency I give my full name and am transferred immediately. Judy took down some information about Kasey's name and Jonas' birthday but knew the rest already, including the dates my grandmother suggested and our closest airport. Our conversations are always cheery and short. Judy is a professional. A few days later our itinerary arrived and I glanced over it for any glaring issues. I worried about the multiple connecting flights only because I knew Kasey would.
Later I learned she had good reason. Our final destination was Idaho Falls, Idaho, just under two thousand miles from our apartment in Virginia. It took three separate planes and thirteen hours to get there, which would have been hard on anyone without the added difficulty of gate changes, delays, a fussy thirty-pound toddler and his unwieldy twenty-pound car seat, and motion sickness on his part.
After the first flight I discovered the behemoth car seat was rated for use in aircraft but not designed for it. The space through which the seat belt goes is barely large enough for my fingers to fit in, and only after we landed did I discover the latch of the buckle requires enough space for its entire two inches to make a nearly 180-degree arc before it releases. Frantically I tried to unbuckle the car seat while everyone else deplaned and my son looked at me with an expression that wavered between annoyance and worry. Finally I worked out how to force slack into the buckle centimeter by centimeter until I could bodily shove the car seat into the wall of the plane enough to free it. The second plane had the buckle coming from the other side and my trick did not work no matter how raw I made my fingers. The entire plane was nearly empty before I discovered how to unclip the seatbelt from the frame of the seat itself, which I was certain you couldn't do, and carry the stained car seat and toddler off the plane.
Stained, because it was on this second flight into Denver that Jonas got sick. Being afflicted with motion sickness, I had already taken nearly the daily maximum dosage of Dramimimine to steel myself against nausea, the worst sensation available to man. The flight had been turbulent enough to delay the beverage cart once or twice but finally we were able to purchase a fruit and cheese plate for $8, credit card only. Jonas wolfed down juice, cheese, and grapes as there had been no time between flights to eat and he must have been starving. As we began our descent the turbulence worsened. Jonas, who had been sitting very still, began to make little coughing noises. My eyes were closed to aid the Dramimine but I looked over in time to see a good portion of his juice and grapes come silently back up from his stomach. I don't know if this is true of all young children or particular to Jonas, but he never makes any of those classic noises associated with being physically ill. Endearingly and to her credit Kasey immediately began comforting him with a voice unaffected by being stuck next to a vomiting child inside a turbulent airplane. He became understandably upset by his first experience with motion sickness and Kasey did the best she could with the small amount of baby wipes we had brought onboard.
Once on the ground Jonas completely recovered and I cleaned his shirt with paper towels and changed his diaper in the men's room. The plaid blue shorts he'd been wearing were too wet with sick to put back on. Since we didn't have a change of clothes he spent our time in Denver with the faint sickly-sweat smell of partially digested juice and grapes and ran around the airport pointing to the biplanes hanging from the ceiling and other objects of interest in his red shoes and without pants.
It is worth mentioning at this point that either from having to sit still for hours on end or natural toddler grouchiness Jonas had been perfectly frustrating the entire trip, save for those times when he was distracted by takeoffs, landings, or sleep. I suppose he could have been worse but at the time it was hard to imagine.
All airports seem designed to purposefully place connecting flights as far away from each other as physically possible. Coming and going, an hour-long layover was barely enough time to perform an accelerated death march from one gate to the other before immediately having to board, with eating and elimination having to wait until the Fasten Seatbelt sign was turned off. Our layover in Denver was no different, except the added insult of three gate changes which ended back at the original gate and an hour delay. Each change required the better part of a ten minute walk with our carryon luggage, exhausted Jonas, and his car seat weighing us down like we were pack mules.
We had been traveling for at least ten hours straight when threats to cancel multiple flights due to weather conditions were announced. Outside the bunker-like terminal that had obviously been built after the rest of the airport, it rained softly while lightening could be seen above the horizon from every window. The people crowded into the small outbuilding were showing obvious signs of frustration and exhaustion, faces frowning and upturned to the flat-screen monitors on the walls searchingly or from habit. One woman who seemed dressed for a day at the beach loudly berated the gate attendant while her husband stood by looking too tired to care.
Finally we were allowed to board the tiny plane, which was too small to use a jetway. We walked across the tarmac and up a wheelchair-accessible ramp in the misting rain. There was a brief scare as the captain announced over the intercom that they were waiting on a maintenance issue to be checked out. I was too exhausted to be concerned with broken planes and could only worry the flight would be cancelled. I didn't care if we might crash, just get us the fuck out of Denver and our traveling over with. Shortly we joined a dozen planes taxied on the runway all trying to make it out while they could, and I watched rain drops make paths on the window in the dark while we waited. It was after 11:30pm MST, which made it 1:30am our time. We'd left the house at 1:00pm that day.
Jonas fell asleep on the plane and I had difficulty unhooking the seatbelt from the seat. The stewardess had given me a seatbelt extension but it hadn't made any difference. The captain, a friendly-looking balding man with glasses and a skinny build, came back to help just as I was able to unhook it. My fingertips were red and raw and later I noticed dried blood where I'd torn the thumbnail up from the skin underneath it. I smiled at the attendant and the captain as I hefted the car seat with Jonas asleep still in it down the isle, and we walked across the tarmac towards a set of double doors unsure of where to go.
We entered the tiny airport and almost immediately ran into the baggage claim. Jonas woke up as I set him down to grab our bags but only made a tired face and squinted against the light. No one can look as tired as children. I called the hotel and they sent a van over to pick us up within minutes. The driver was Hispanic with rimless glasses and shorter than I was. He opened the sliding door and I worked on getting the car seat fastened while he put our bags in back. I tried to ask him if there'd been any bad weather but he couldn't understand me until I repeated and simplified my question a few times. The hotel was a short drive from the airport and when we got out the air felt cool and clean on my face. The driver unloaded our bags and stood quietly at the back of the van while I unloaded Jonas. When I turned back to tip him he was already climbing into the seat. I wasn't sure if I had any bills smaller than a ten and was too worn out to care very much although I felt bad about it afterwards.
I provided my credit card to the desk clerk and we checked into room 334 on the 3rd floor, not quite at the end of the hall but far enough from the elevator that I shook my head at all the walking we had to do. We dropped the bags as soon as we got into the room. The clock between the two beds said 1:34. Between the curtains I could see a broiling river below the small hill of the hotel and a white building that looked like a monument or a church with a gold statue on top centered almost perfectly in our window.
Surreally Jonas appeared to have found a second wind. He moved around the room picking things up and seeing what he was allowed to touch. "Aren't you tired?" we desperately implored, but he only shook his head spitefully. I pulled the covers down on one of the beds and pulled Jonas up into it. He protested loud enough for me to wonder if the neighbors could hear him. He was too tired or the bed was too tall for him to climb back down and I attempted to cuddle next to him and inspire sleep, but he whined and pushed me away. Kasey crawled in with him and he didn't make a sound. I half-seriously pouted in a chair near the sliding glass door and glared at his tiny back. He whined for a bottle while making the sign for it in Kasey's face and I stomped from the chair to the luggage to the bathroom and made him one from the sink faucet. I shoved the bottle at him in mock anger and threw myself on the other bed face down.
Soon he was finished and I wormed my way into the bed with them, Jonas between us. Before turning out the lights I set the alarm on my phone for 8:30, less than six hours away, just in time for the complimentary breakfast my dad had told me not to miss when I'd called him from Denver.
The next thing I remember was the perfect yellow sun and its reflection on the river shining through the rectangular part in the curtains directly into our faces through the clean morning air of Idaho.
0 comments:
Post a Comment