Getting home for the holidays, the hard way

Now that the obligation to spread Christmas joy and cheer is behind us, I feel its time to share with you the story of how we got home for the holidays.

The Odyssey to Tennessee Part One: Grounded

Being prudent, responsible folk, David and I secured our plane reservations for Christmas months ago. I even remembered to call the day before to score the bulkhead, which you’ll remember from my previous posts on the subject is something I feel passionately about. The way in which I packed our suitcase was nothing short of a work of art. I’d handed out gifts and envelopes to everyone on the list - all the teachers and teacher’s helpers, all the doormen and porters and supers. We were in a somewhat shocking state of preparedness for our flight Saturday afternoon.

And then the blizzard struck.

Its not that we didn’t know it was coming. We were just optimistic. But then, Saturday morning, we turned out the news and heard, “a historic snowstorm” . . . “10-20 inches in the city” . . . “canceling all flights” . . . “we’ve never seen anything like it!” Encouraging stuff.

Our flight was rescheduled for the next night at 8pm, which was great, because a lot of people didn’t even get rescheduled. Less than ideal, since traveling at night with my sleep-averse children is something I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. I know how that shit goes down because we’ve been there – oh! how we’ve been there. As I say though, we were just thanking our lucky stars we had seats on something airborne. We decided to make the most of it and headed over to our good friend’s apartment for a pre-blizzard bagel party. We bundled the kids and played in the snow. We filed six months worth of bills and paperwork. We had sex. By the following afternoon, we were in great spirits, and oh-so-ready to rumble.

Until I noticed that Seconda had a fever.

It wasn’t high – 100.3 – but she had the glassy eyes, the bright-red face and the miserable moaning that signifies this was just the beginning. Now, in the summertime, when everyone’s pretty healthy, a little lowgrade fever’s not such a crisis. But in late December, with a swine flu epidemic still in play, and my grandmother, who takes care of Sec, sick in bed with a strep throat -- it didn’t look promising. I’d taken Primo on the plane when he had 104 fever, at the end of our “vacation” to San Francisco, and that was one of the most anxiety-producing experiences yet.

David and I figured since we really didn’t know what this fever was going to turn into, it wasn’t a good idea to take her on the airplane. So I graciously offered to stay with Sec while he went ahead with Primo, and we’d just catch a flight later in the week and meet them down South. That was wildly naïve. No seats nohow to Knoxville – not direct, not connecting, nothing.

Sec fell asleep in the middle of these proceedings, and that was the dealbreaker. Although nearly all other 2.5 year olds on earth are still taking their proscribed afternoon nap, Sec hasn’t slept during daytime hours in months. Even when I locked her in her crib tent, and even when she’s in the car or in the stroller and even when I beg her and bribe her, she never sleeps til darkness falls. Kid was sick. We cancelled the flights.

And then, Eureka! Mommy has an idea.

“Why not drive?” I ask David.

Why not drive?

WHY NOT DRIVE?

I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t drive to Tennessee in a single day with your two children under the age of five. In tomorrow’s post I will tell you about it, in detail, because we flipping DID IT.

Bulkhead-hoggers beware

So the key element to successful air travel with young children, the missing puzzle piece, the thing you cannot do without is . . . BULKHEAD. Ah, bulk-head. I love the tough, no-shit, slightly dirty sound of it. I. Always. Get. Bulkhead. Do I sound defiant? Challenging? That’s because I am. I DEFY you to take my bulkhead away from me. It’s not going to happen. That bulkhead is rightfully mine and I always get it.

Now, it’s not always easy because sometimes other people want the bulkhead.

Occasionally these people are also parents with a few little critters in tow and in these cases, when they’ve gotten to the bulkhead before me, well, fair is fair and there’s not much I can do, except try to squeeze into whatever remaining seats there are. But that, I find, is rare.

Usually the people who beat me to the bulkhead are just big old lazybones. Honestly, I can’t even tell you why someone without children or another kind of handicap would even want the bulkhead – I had never even heard the word “bulkhead” before Primo was born. But these people have heard of bulkhead. They’ve heard of it and they want it – maybe because it has more leg room, maybe just because it’s special – and since they are totally unencumbered, having no children or handicaps, they get to the gate before us and they get the bulkhead.

Do not think for a second that bulkhead is something that can’t be taken BACK. Getting bulkhead is not some irreversible process, like when a meter maid starts writing out a ticket and just can’t stop. So these non-parent, non-handicapped bulkhead-hoggers may reserve the bulkhead but they don’t have a hope in hell of keeping it when they’ve got me on the plane. I am indefatigable. Like a goddamn bulldog.

“Sorry, the bulkhead is taken,” the airline rep at the gate informs me.

“All of it?” I reply.

She nods.

“Well, is there any way you could move the people sitting there?” I ask as sweetly as possible, “You see, I have two young children, and it is really helpful for us to sit in bulkhead, not just for us, but for everyone on the plane. Trust me, the kids will be much less of a bother if you can just get us the bulkhead.”

Sometimes this works. But sometimes I have to take it to the next level. Sometimes the airline rep says she can’t do anything about it but that if the people sitting there want to switch me with, they certainly can.

That’s when things get nasty.

“Its OK Nik,” David pleads as we ready to board, “We don’t need the bulkhead, “Its fine.”

What he’s really saying is, “Please don’t make a scene.” And he can forget it.

“It is NOT fine,” I reply, “We DO need the bulkhead so Seconda won’t kick the back of someone’s seat or stand up and pull the hair of the person in front of her, and it also really helps her to sit on the floor in front and play with her dolls and lie down or whatever, We need it AND we deserve it.”

In this one specific circumstance, I feel totally, one hundred percent entitled. That bulkhead belongs to parents the way highchairs at restaurants belong to us and changing tables in bathrooms belong to us. People without kids have EVERYTHING ELSE to enjoy – such as a flight uninterrupted by whining, nagging, and tantrums. They can read their books and magazines and have illuminating conversation and meet new people and join the mile high club or just sleep. Sleep, for God’s sake! I think its just plain greedy to want the bulkhead on top of that.

So we get on board and I very politely ask the bulkhead-hoggers, often tall, skinny twenty-something guys traveling alone or else middle-aged couples who have a lot of bags and seem nervous about flying, if they wouldn’t mind switching seats with us since I have these young children and it would really help us out to have a little more room to entertain them. Often this simple plea works. But on the rare occasions when it doesn’t, I have to get nasty. I just do.

That’s when David takes the kids and moves down the aisle while I rip the bulkhead-hoggers a new asshole, calling them rude and selfish and telling them they are gonna regret it when my kids scream and yell and puke on them for two hours straight.

This is how I always get bulkhead. It may not win me any popularity contests but I have to say it makes the temporary relocation of me and my family seem a little more like a vacation. It really does.