Planes and toddlers

Its every mom’s nightmare….travelling alone with a toddler. “my kid made my dreams come true’…..something one can picture a kind hearted, beautiful mom saying…..in most cases, dreams that do come true (related to the topic) are the ones that can technically be classified under nightmares!!

 It is surreal to expect the worst and watch it unfold infront of your eyes.

At best of times, toddlers are scary. Add no sense of discipline or authority (and my daughter is a particularly severe case) -  to a confined, unexplored space  and you have a lethal combination.

Like all parents , I have developed a skin which will shame a pachyderm !  We have learnt the art of ignoring the looks which say ‘o my god’, ‘shame on you as a parent’. In some ways, one forms a disconnect between yourself and the child….a subconscious attempt at conveying that ‘I am with this child but am not responsible for the actions’.  These are survival techniques which are not enlisted in any ‘survival for dummies’ book but nevertheless, is the most important technique used by parents. The psychological power of these techniques on the suffering parents is amazing!

So, the journey begins…..armed with a  battery of weapons one boards the taxi hoping that the weaponry will be of use. A bag full of toys, books, toffees,  straws and the like! Its carrots all the way with toddlers, stick is not an option, especially not in public space! But, as the successive generations of US defense forces will vouch, all weaponry and all the carrots that money can buy, fails when faced with a motivated lot.

Waiting in line is not what a toddler wants in a new unexplored space.....swinging on the trolley (and in the process, bumping into fellow co-passengers , whose cooperation, one may add, one needs in the flight) can only keep the child entertained for that much of time!  After that, it is more or less a saga of running after the child, leaving ones luggage with all its contents, to goodwill of people around you! Add to this scene, a chaotic airport like the Nairobi one, this is not good news for the luggage or for the mother! A thousand times I cursed my husband for not procuring a baby leash on his last trip outside the country! The logic being, one is getting dirty, judgmental looks in any case, so why not have a baby leash and let the people judge more! If there were a petshop on the airport, I would have purchased a leash straight away- one fit for a Rottweiler!

In-between the chaos of running after the child, interspersed with loud bellows to call the truant sheep home, one manages to get the boarding card.  How is it that more passports etc are not lost on the airports is a baffling thing for me…..even if one in 100 passengers are travelling with kids, one would expect a neat pile of lost documents by the end of hour 1 !

Armed with a check in card, one weaves a meandering path to the immigration….repeat of run and fetch routine till one’s turn comes. At such times one understands why Goddess Durga has multiple sets of hands- they are mighty useful when one is joggling between passports, immigration papers, finger prints and photos! Probably the Goddess was given an option between multiple hands and never ending happiness, the practical one that she is, she chose multiple hands!! For those of us without such extremities, those 3 minutes at the counter seem like eternity….coming back to haunt you in dreams in which one misplaces the passport or breaks their cameras! My daughter in particular, loves the finger print biometric machine. The fact that her finger prints are not being taken rankles her (hell! I am an individual in my own right)…and like Kejriwal , she sets about trying to right the wrong (action being the key word, law and procedures are  a hazy bumble for Kejriwal and are non existent for my daughter! Deviating from the topic, do you think I should get a free membership of AAP for my daughter? Those guys are sitting at the entrance of the nearby market ….one would have mistaken them for those showering free samples of newly launched butter, was it not for the caps)

Then comes the next stage,  security check!  Security checks are a challenge with a toddler (like all other things). By the time the stroller is folded, the child could be anywhere!  And by the time you have unpacked your laptop and explained to the security personnel as to why one is carrying tetrapacks of juices and milk, the child could, in theory, have boarded the plane to Russia!

This done, now is the time to wait, shopkeepers beware- mother, more beware…all things broken are considered sold! Co passengers waiting patiently for the boarding to start also don’t have it easy.  Picture this, a person, finally through with all formalities, has just settled down with a cup of coffee and is catching up with the world that has whizzed past all this while that s/he was staring into the immigration cameras. S/He is in a hurry to catch up, to tell the world, which is waiting with bated breadth, that s/he is at the Nairobi airport…..suddenly s/he senses something fluttery on her/his shoes!! Then the flutter turns more like a touch and a piercing cheerful scream rips over the airport din……the coffee spills, the laptop fumbles…..The perpetuator- my daughter, who had crept in from under the back of the seat, attracted like a moth to a flame, by the interesting shoes (laces, buckles, colour- anything )….the scream being the output of sheer joy of bettering the obstacle course! The poor passenger cannot even scream at the kid….a weak smile and off s/he goes to fetch another cup of coffee (strained nerves) and to find a safer, hidden corner to hide her/his shaken and stirred mortal body!

Once inside the plane, a mommy looks around to get seats where other, unknown passengers are not seated. This is less to treat ourselves to comfort and more to prevent harassment of the passenger unlucky enough to sit next to us.

You know why kids cry when plane takes off…..its a way to sonically detect where other kids are seated….so that the fun can start once mommies allow the kids to move!  Like Elephants communicating through stomach rumbles, the kids plan their next moves with each other through those cries. As soon as seatbelt sign is off, the selected kids raise hell for susu/potty so that mommies are forced to taken them to the loo. In that journey, the selected kids zero in on the precise coordinates of fellow kids….now all is set for the nextstage.

Slowly, kids start emerging from the seats to the aisle…..and soon enough, they are playing with each other, with each others toys and going around to all the mommies to extract all the chocolates from them (mommies take out the chocs to calm down the kids when they are next to her!).  The veterans in flying kids teach the green eared ones new tricks- how to embarrass mommies by asking stewards for more nuts, how to insist on susu/potty when the food trolleys are precisely in the middle of the plane, how to spill water/soda in a way that a bit falls on a passenger (.a bit being the operative word- too much of it and it invites sanctions from mommy….a bit is just right, not good enough for sanctions but good enough for a laugh) etc.  A particularly hairy trick (in this case, actually hairy), is one of touching clips of the women sleeping with their heads on the aisle side. One feels sorry for the women but cest a vie!

While the kids create mayhem, mommies try to do damage control …inbetween hurriedly taken sips of vodka and sprite…silently thanking the Gods that may be, for giving mankind the brains to come up with wonderful inventions!

Toddlers have a gigantic , amazingly  fast brain when it comes to coming up with ways of being a nuisance to society. The bit about taking forever to learn words and alphabets, spending years learning inane rhymes …well that is just a worldwide conspiracy perpetuated to prevent them from being held accountable for their deeds. Get the toddler on the seat and they immediately find a suitably disruptive way of opening the table on the seat infront (opens with a bang, since they are not equipped with hydraulic niceties….and gives the person sitting on the seat infront a nice jolt everytime!).  Then they stand on the seat and the table…..stare into passengers on the seats….and then egg them on to play peekaboo with them.  For the non child oriented passengers, there can be nothing more irritating (as it used to be for me when I was not a mommy…I feel for you buddy…..).

Finally, toddler gets tired enough to sleep….a time which mommies use to thrust in nutrition ,healing alcoholic waters and a spot of TV. A world class spa cannot bring in such copious amount of relaxation as a kid finally going off to sleep in a plane!!

5 mins from landing, your toddler is sure to scream his /her life out for potty which shall not find its exit in a diaper ….and as soon as you settle the child for a favorable exit, the seat belt signs come on!!! The pachyderm skin helps you live through those moments when you know you are breaking the law….but a toddler has to go when a toddler has to go!!

Finally one lands…repeat the immigration fracas and you reach the belts to retrieve your luggage.  There is something about the conveyor belts that begs the toddlers to explore them……so one has to multitask- keep the toddler off the belt while squinting over the belt to locate your luggage! You are elated to get one of the two baggage immediately…..its then that murphy’s law sets in…..the second one will be among the last ones to come….by which time your kid is bored of the conveyor belt, bored of the trolley, bored of jumping on your luggage (which always has something breakable)…and is looking actively for fresh pastures to explore.

Finally, you are on your way out…if you are lucky, relatives will be waiting at the exit….you will, without a tinge, hand over the toddler parcel to them and hope that they can cope up!! Vacation has just begun!!!

Disclaimer: All incidents mentioned are true. And no, I am not about to add a soppy line about inspite of problems, how rewarding parenthood is!! I  have yet to see the rewards and don’t harbour secret illusions that there will be any!!!