Go West Young Man

I completed my post-holiday celebration of Labor Day by working day and night, and even further into night. Ten days or so foregoing those bothersome tasks of eating and sleeping so I can fulfill a lifelong dream of holding two jobs at once.* At long last, a trip to parts unknown awaited me and my family.

The thought of traveling halfway across the country after that kind of schedule left me conflicted. On the one hand, there’s all that time sans technology reacquainting myself with a mattress. Beautiful scenery. Old friends reunited. Possibly whales. Ahh, I could feel my circulation returning just by closing my eyes and imagining all of the good things that embody “vacation.”

On the other hand, all of the mental images had a little human in them. A little human who doesn’t like to ride in a car for long distances. A little human who believes nothing can be worse than a car but has yet to ride in an airplane. A little human boy with a semi-neurotic father. A semi-neurotic father petrified of the sounds potentially emanating from his son and the social awkwardness those sounds might evoke from a crowd of perfect strangers stuck with him on a six-hour, two-stop flight to Seattle.

Makes one long for the 20-hour workday.

Amy and I had discussed the obstacles that faced us on this journey Northwest for Tonya & Bill’s Wedding Tour 2000 (with performances in Washington and Illinois). We knew we desperately needed some time away, but the thought of spending most of it battling the squirmy urges of a 7-month-old was not appealing. On a bad day, Carter could stretch a 4-hour drive to Chicago into an 8-hour ordeal. By the time we finished a round-trip drive to Seattle, Carter could have aged a month. We, of course, would have aged several years. Since taking a train was even worse — we couldn’t have pulled over every 20 miles to walk without making a major capital investment in Amtrak — we were forced to fly.

We opted to buy a seat for Carter, despite money-saving suggestions to strap him to his mother. The carseat had to come along anyway for rides in the rental car, so it was a natural leap to strap him in for takeoffs and landings. It also gave us a little more room to breathe during snacks and meals and a modicum of privacy during breastfeeding.

The worst parts of the flight for an infant, we were told, are the takeoff and landing when the air cabin pressure changes. The tricks taught to alleviate the discomfort for older humans — yawning on cue, chewing gum, drinking a shake through a straw — aren’t options for a kid who only recently figured out he could breathe through his mouth. That leaves nipples, either artificial or real, as the viable response to ear-popping. Carter has never seen a pacifier, so short of Amy challenging FFA regulations demanding seatbelts to be fastened and tray tables stored in their locked and upright position, we pulled out the only proactive weapon we had: the sippy cup.

Carter hadn’t had a lot of sippy cup experience to date. A veteran of sucking on things where his saliva is the only liquid, he seemed a bit shocked whenever the cup salivates back. Nervous to a fault, I was a bit too proactive with the sippy cup during takeoff. Or perhaps I needed more flying experience myself to realize that a moving plane is not always on the verge of takeoff. My boy had lost interest in the cup well before we were airborne.

I was hyper-cognizant of the continuing changes in air cabin pressure, picturing only that scene from James Bond when the bad guy’s head explodes from much the same phenomenon. Too compensate for my son’s inability to cope with such a deadly attack on his own, I doubled my swallowing and yawning efforts to a rate of 20 or so per minute. The abrupt cries and welling tears of a fussy baby were proof, to me, that I was failing.

Enter the thumb.

A thumb is like a pacifier, except it is accessible at all times and isn’t likely to fall under the refrigerator only to emerge covered in a half-century of lint. Carter starting sucking his thumb a couple months back, discovering it one day much like America discovered oil. It’s always been there, but the connection wasn’t made that this would be a useful thing to have. During fussy moments, Carter uses his thumb like his personal Time Out. He calls it, he stops crying long enough to catch his breath, and then returns to the fight ready for the next round.

Surprisingly, to me, the battle in the air proved anti-climatic. Carter sputtered and grunted some dissatisfaction, but no more so than any other time he feels too confined by the carseat or too tired to realize he needs to nap. When the flight attendant gave the green light — or more correctly, turned off the red light — Carter was free to roam around the cabin. He smiled and giggled and flirted with nearby passengers. He shrieked with delight at the blonde tuft of hair sticking over the seat in front of us, mistaking it for Nana’s dog, Woody. Mostly, he slept comfortably in the arms of either his dad or mom.

Sandwiched in between cabin compression and decompression, my family got to enjoy a trip out west to Seattle for the first time. Our friends were successfully married in front of family and nature, and my friend the mattress put me up for about 20 hours straight the first night. There was no cable or NBC, either, further insulating me from the pressures of the outside world. No whales were seen, but fun was had by all.

The final leg of the journey — a puddle-hopper from Cincinnati to Indianapolis — was probably the worst bout with airplanes we experienced. There was barely enough time to get adjusted to the takeoff when the landing gear was locked in place, all of which happened to be during a prime playtime for my son. Those passengers might not have seen the best of our boy, but we certainly had over the course of the previous week.

I don’t know if this experience taught me anything. I’d like to think I know my child a bit more now and that some milestone test has been passed. But a father who worries will always find something over which to stress. In those instances, I may reacquaint myself with my thumb. It seemed to work for Carter.