A Recent Trip by Soozy G. Miller

“Mommy, look what I did!” my 2 year old son, Clark, announces proudly as he points to the small pile of poop now in his seat next to me. He had been screaming, “I have poopies!” for the last fifteen minutes, tears running down his face. At one point he had ripped off his seat belt, stood up in the seat and screamed, but the flight attendant, who obviously had no children of her own, stopped by our row and made it very clear that he was not to unbuckle or stand in his seat or move in any way before the seatbelt light went off. So when the light finally did go off, he ripped off his seatbelt, quickly stood up in the small space between his seat and the one in front of him and pointed out his little creation. During the fifteen minutes in which he was forced to sit on a dirty diaper, the mess had pushed up his back, through his shirt and down his pants. He and the seat were a mess. I immediately pushed the flight attendant button and pointed to the spot. Her response? Plastic bags and a request to proceed with caution to the lavatories. Thanks a lot.

That was only one incident of many during my most recent trip from Atlanta to New York. I decided to write this article because otherwise no one would ever believe the whole story. Having taken this trip many times before—beginning when my son was six months old—I was used to all kinds of pitfalls. And even though I have a regular babysitter, Patricia, who helps me on these trips, I know that things usually go wrong when traveling anywhere with two small children. But this day definitely took the cake so far. From airport to airport the entire day was a series of mishaps.

To begin, I had made a reservation on an 8:10am flight. Sounds early, but it was cheaper and my daughter is usually up by 6:30am anyway and both she and my son are easy to wake up when they know we’re going some place exciting, so I figured what the heck.

We actually got out the door on time, even though Jessica got up at 5:30am, which could have thrown me off because I have to concentrate on last minute details. When we got to the airport parking, we had a choice of three: Hourly, Daily, and Economy. Patricia was flying back later that day after escorting me to LaGuardia, so we picked Daily. Well, I have never parked in Daily at Hartsfield. So when we got on the Daily ramp, I didn’t know where to turn and all the levels looked full, so I ended up driving to the top level and parking. We might as well have parked in Alabama, we were so far from the terminal. We got out and began to collect our things: double stroller, suitcase, large duffel bag, large knapsack, sweaters, two children. It sounds like a lot, but Patricia is a trooper and it actually seemed quite manageable after we got organized. We started walking towards the check-in area and had gotten almost to the entrance when it hit me…car seats! I left both car seats in the car! I knew it had seemed too easy. If we were staying in my parents’ place in New York City, quite honestly, I would have considered leaving the seats because the ride is only a half hour and we never get back in the car once we’re there. But my father was picking us up and driving to the beach house, which was 2 ½ hours. No way without car seats for that trip. So I left Patricia with all the stuff and the kids and ran back to the car and hauled the infant seat (with base) and the booster seat back to her. Boy, were they heavy. It was only 7:30am and I was already sweating.

Next, we got inside to check in and we were late—but we didn’t realize how late until the check-in clerk put a bright pink HOT ticket on all of our luggage and the car seats. When we walked away and were figuring out what to eat for breakfast, the same clerk waved us down and shouted, pointing to the gate area, “Mrs. Miller…GO!” We didn’t know what he meant…until we got to security. There were, no joke, 1,000 people standing in line. I started to sweat more. I looked at my watch and it was 7:50am. I flagged down a green-vested official and showed her kids in the double stroller. She sent me to another green-vested official who pushed us ahead of everyone to an ID checker. She checked my ticket and my heart sank when she told me that I and Clark had been selected for a random Special Security Search. Ugh. Now I was sweating and getting stressed. After Clark and I followed Patricia and Jessica through the security arch, we were ushered into a very small, totally-enclosed glass standing area where we waited for someone to tell us what to do. Finally, a woman came over and led us to yet another area and asked us to take off our shoes and actually began to EXPLAIN what she was going to do. I thought I was going to die. I kept saying very quickly and bluntly, “Yes, that’s fine….yes, that’s fine. Just do it” They even had Clark raise his arms in a T and scanned him.

Inside the gate train, the only way for me to hang on was to hold one of the hanging straps. Somehow I got a whiff of something sweaty near me, and quickly realized it was me. Great—I was wearing a sleeveless shirt and my deodorant wasn’t working.

When we got out of the train, we had to take the elevator up to the gates. We came out of those doors like a racehorse when the gate has been opened: sprinting. I felt like I was in a car chase scene. I was yelling at the top of my voice, “’Scuuuuuuuuuuuse meeeeeeee!” as Patricia and I ran and pushed the stroller. People were literally jumping out of the way. It was hysterical.

We got to the gate with 2 minutes to spare; they were taking down the plane information from the board and one of them said, “We’re closed.” We got on the plane. The plane took off. Jessica started wailing.

We thought she was the one with the dirty diaper. Remember, she had been awake since 5:30am and it was now 8:15am. Nap time. She was tired. I smelled her diaper and there was something suspicious in it and that was probably another reason why she was crying. Which brings me back to the poop-on-the-seat incident. While we were waiting for the seatbelt light to go off, both kids were crying from dirty diapers. Patricia heard a passenger behind us tell the flight attendant in a very heavy southern accent, “He doesn’t want to sit in the mud!”

While I was cleaning up the dirty seat with baby wipes, Patricia checked Jessica’s diaper by looking in it and there actually wasn’t anything in it—must have been gas. But she was still crying and fussing from exhaustion. As Clark and I were getting up to go to the lavatory, I looked to the back of the plane and saw that the beverage/snack cart had started in the rear, thus blocking off two of the lavatories. So we had to use the only one available, in Business Class. I walked up with Clark, carrying my travel changing mat, a diaper and a container of wipes. But the lavatory was in use and another gentleman was already waiting, so we stood. In Business Class. By the front row. We were soon joined by a woman, now third in line waiting for the lavatory. There I was, practically standing between the knees of the first row passenger, Clark clinging to my legs, trying to keep balance when the turbulence hit, and trying to stay out of the way of the attendants. Then I saw Patricia waving me down from her seat. She was holding up the plastic bags the attendant had given us—I had forgotten to take them. So she tried to come forward to me, holding Jessica, who was still upset. She grabbed Jessica’s bottle, and Jessica took it. But as Patricia got into Business Class to hand me the bags, Jessica dropped the bottle and it rolled to underneath a man in the second row, opposite the aisle from me. This wouldn’t have been a problem except his tray was down and he was working on his computer, so he couldn’t bend down and reach underneath his seat to grab it. And Patricia had no room to do it, either. Then, to top it all off, with all this going on—a man waiting to go before me, Clark and I standing in between a passenger’s legs while I’m holding diaper changing equipment, Patricia dealing with a passenger trying to retrieve Jessica’s bottle, and a fourth passenger waiting to use the lavatory behind me—the attendant came out from the kitchen with a full tray of drinks and said, “This is a Business Class section. We can’t have everybody just standing here!”

Finally, the door opened and I took Clark in. Have you ever tried to change a two year old who is the size of a four year old in a plane bathroom? As I told Patricia when I got back to the seat, “You can’t be fat and hang out in that bathroom.” There was barely any room for us, and I’m 115 pounds. Clark insisted on playing with the faucets and sink drain closer—at least he was distracted while I did my best to clean up the huge mess. I can’t tell you how many times various clothes and pieces of equipment fell down around the toilet, out of my reach. (Patricia also wanted me to note here the utter look of disgust that the third waiting passenger had on her face as I walked out of the lavatory because I had taken so long.)

Thankfully, the remainder of the plane trip was tedious but doable. Jessica did cry almost the whole way. Whenever we thought she was close to drifting off, her head would pop up and she would push off of us and try to climb down to crawl.

And to finish the disaster, when I went to put the infant seat in my father’s car, the bucklehead wouldn’t fit through the hole if the seat faced backward, so Jessica rode to and from Wainscott, Long Island facing forward…dangerously and illegally. And my father mentioned that the car’s emission inspection sticker was out of date, so he stayed in the right lane and drove 55 the whole trip.

Soozy G. Miller is a full time mom and freelance writer who lives in Marietta, Georgia with her husband and two children.