Travel With Seasoning

I am a seasoned traveler. I have traveled on hundreds of aeroplanes, buses, and trains in the course of my lifetime so far, so much so, that I have actually stopped counting. In addition, over nearly 20 years of marriage I have also traveled quite a bit with children in tow. Filling out numerous immigration cards, I have almost memorized all the passport details. Memorising birthdates of 7 children plus that of your spouse and yourself is no easy feat for some, but from pure practice and perhaps a ‘gifting’, I now rattle it off in a breath, or more realistically two or three.

Nevertheless, travel unless totally alone and with minimal hand luggage only, is never stress-free. Bearing that in mind, on the whole, airline companies do their utmost to make your journey as comfortable as possible as it is beneficial for business.

Well, the most recent flight left me with pleading for it to be my last! I was traveling to Thailand to join my husband and 3 of our children who had gone on ahead. With me on this flight were our other 4 children, 2 being the youngest ages 5 and 2. We had 9 pieces of luggage, plus hand luggage. We checked through our check-in luggage and we still made the quota ok, without being overweight. So, I sighed with a sigh of relief but too soon to my chagrin – the check-in person asked me to weigh the hand luggage too! Never, in all of the times I have flown have I needed to weigh the hand luggage, so I hadn’t given it much thought. My yard-stick for weighing hand luggage was - if I could carry it up and down the hallway a couple of times, with toddler in arms and not bending half over when I carried it - then it wasn’t too heavy. Well, my computer bag perhaps was a bit on the ‘heavy’ side, but that was my laptop computer – an exception in this day and age surely. As it turns out the computer bag met the criteria for one person, but the check-in person said it had to be in 2 separate bags. You can’t ‘separate’ the contents of a computer bag. But insist she did. Then each of the hand luggage had to be weighed. They were all a bit over (perhaps I am not all fat after all, but there is muscle there after lifting toddlers all these years!). In the end, I had to check through all the hand luggage and leave some of the other bags in the care of family. I still had to figure out how I was to ‘separate’ the contents of my computer bag. At this point, I was near ‘losing’ it in panic. We were running late. We still had to fill out our immigration cards, to go through immigration, and find our gate in time for boarding.

We managed to do all the above and reached our gate just as people were starting to board. The little kids were hot, thirsty, hungry and tired. No time to stop for snacks, I handed over our boarding passes and the man apprehended me! Is there a problem sir? I asked. ‘We have been notified to check the weight of your hand luggage’. He checked and seeing there was no reason for concern, let us on board.

I found our seats at the very rear of the economy class cabin. They were near the toilets, (handy for the little ones, I thought optimistically). By this time, our 2 year old son, was asking for milk to drink. “We will have some as soon as the plane takes off” I assured him. The plane sat there and sat there, it was late departing. Meanwhile to add to everything, the air-conditioning in our part of the cabin wasn’t working! I called to the stewardess to perhaps allow us to have milk for the Master 2, while we were still stationary. The steward responded to my call, so I politely asked. “You will have to wait until after take-off Madam” He replied curtly. “But can’t you make an exception? My little boy is hot and thirsty, the air-conditioning is not working, the plane is late…..”. Sorry, Madam it is regulations. I try my best to soothe my child. Then the seatbelt lights come on, Master 2 is in my lap, finally content in my arms. The steward arrives at my seat “Seatbelts Madam”. “Could I please have a child belt to latch onto my own?” Your son is 2 and has his own seat. He has to be belted in his own seat”. “My son is fearful of the takeoff. Can’t I just use the child-belt?” He replied in a tone that made me feel I was criminally intent or a terrorist or something. “No, it is against regulations” I obediently but reluctantly placed my young son in the seat next to me, amidst his loud protests – ever try putting a seatbelt on a toddler who is struggling to get out of the seat?

I start making motions of an aeroplane with my hands, to bring the attention of my young son to the fact, the takeoff was not such a bad thing. His grandparents had bought him a little model aeroplane to bring with him, so he starting mimicking me. We finally took off! The crew started serving the meals. Our faithful travel agent assured me when I picked up our tickets that she had ordered 2 children’s meals. As it turned out the airline only had one left. I immediately brought it to their attention that I had ordered 2. (How can you possibly give one child a tray with special kid’s goodies on it and the other sitting right next to them not?) The steward by this stage, I’m sure, was ready to ‘turn me in’ as a threat to society! The stewardess, on the other hand, was more sympathetic, and assured me that she would try making up a tray the best she could to suit a child. I gave her a look of sheer relief and thanked her profusely. Maybe I will not be deemed a ‘terrorist’ after all!

After eating, I settled in for a long night of no sleep, ever-watching that the children did not thrash their legs and arms onto the person next to them, or cause any other disturbance. My two older children are in the row behind me, content with watching TV or listening to the funnies, or to music. (I had hoped we would be all seated in the same row, but the flights were packed and we were fortunate to get the seats we were given.)

I was tired, emotions raw. I took a deep breath. It had been a long day.

Upon landing, we had to wait until nearly all the passengers had got off before leaving our seats. It takes a bit to waken little ones and get them ready for disembarking.

We are off the plane! Yeah!

We walk the long stretch to the customs and immigration, down to the baggage conveyor belt and took our luggage one by one. One bag is missing. This was just “The icing on the cake.” Yet another incident to add to my notorious list of: How to have the worst flight ever. We wait. Still no bag, so, we then notify the airline staff, give descriptions, our address, sign papers. (We did receive our bag a few days later.)

We finally make it through the doors to the meeting point. Seeing my husband’s and our other children's smiling faces made it all worthwhile.

I’m grateful I don’t have to make another trip on a plane again for a while. I have always enjoyed traveling, but some of the ‘seasoning’ I could certainly do without. :-)

Copyright 2006. Rebecca Laklem.