Mindful Travel

As every parent knows, travel with a child is an exercise in patience and expecting the unexpected.

A few months ago, I took my first solo trip with LA to visit some friends. Armed with the knowledge that my own mother had done many trips of longer duration with two children, not just one, I was confident I would overcome any potential challenges with ease. In retrospect, I realise my mother and I never had an actual conversation about any of those trips. She had a particularly intense hatred for the Detroit Metro Airport, which I knew was based on flying through there, going through customs and being left with two small children, ripped open luggage and no one to help. Beyond that, she was the personification of strength and control when travelling. My mother was the type of person to micromanage a trip down the last detail, although my guess now is she learned to be the micromanager from that early experience in the Detroit airport.

Not being a micromanager myself, I assumed it would be exponentially easier since I would go with the flow as it were. I set up a 5-day trip. How hard could it be? I was going back to somewhere I used to live to see people I knew who wanted to meet my baby. Only 4 and a half hours of air time total, one stop at Chicago O’Hare, an airport I know like the back of my hand. Easy.

False.

LA is a miracle baby in many ways, from arrival to health to magnetic personality. But it appears he has terrible travel luck. Although I had taken this exact flight many times, never with a delay, we were delayed going and returning. There was plenty of rough air—what they now call turbulence, I assume because “rough air” doesn’t have the scary connotations of “turbulence” yet. Unlike the earlier flights when he was a tiny infant, LA did not feel compelled to nap once in the airplane. He did feel a need to jump incessantly in my lap, bite everything around him despite us being in the middle of a pandemic and, at one particularly excruciating point, he managed to grab the hair of the lovely lady sitting next to us. There was far more to that trip, most of it negative, but I came out of it with some important questions to help next overly optimistic traveller do better than I did. Although I’m not sure there is a way to do better. I think it’s mostly about survival.

First decision: The car seat. Do you gate check it? It’s safer for the car seat, but you have to carry a baby, a backpack and a car seat around an airport. What about sending it to the luggage hold? That could lead to damage. Final answer: repurpose the stroller pram pack and use an entire roll of bubble wrap to protect the seat. It worked. Good decision.

Second decision: Layover time. Do you pick the shorter time so your child spends less time in travel and potentially avoids losing his mind in a small tin can? Or do you pick the longer layover so you have time for a leisurely stroll and change in a family bathroom? Don’t be like me. I picked the shorter time. Of course, for a solo traveller, or even adult travellers, a quick rush from one terminal to another is a piece of cake and saves having to sit around in the airport deciding if you do or do not want an overpriced bag of trail mix. Except LA got us delayed so much that we almost missed that second flight. Quick rushes with babies pump your body full of stress hormones, force your body to perform feats it really should not attempt, and leave you feeling like you just climbed through a garbage can. Bad decision.

More useful tips.

Dress for success, not to impress. Feeding babies on flights is like cleaning out the horse stalls in a barn. By the time the flights were over, I was covered in puffs, fruit and substances I couldn’t even recognize. Similarly, avoid bringing food like fruit on airplanes. Stick with dry options. LA loves fruit, but he also loves throwing it around.

Do not sacrifice your mental hygiene for physical hygiene concerns. Option a: you keep the baby clean, off the floor, away from germs. Consequence: he screams on the flight. Option b: you let the baby risk contagion, crawl on the floor with him and try to head off any attempts to lick the floor. Consequence: he naps on the flight or at least coos quietly. If you value your life, choose option b. Your fellow passengers are not the kind, patient people you would hope they would be.

All considered, LA was a stand-up little guy. He charmed his way through three of four flights despite his noise level and on one flight even garnered compliments on his behaviour. I attribute this partly to him having a personality and smile that compels a more charitable attitude out of the grouchiest individuals.

Still, I would be nowhere without mindfulness, in this case mindful gratitude.

Gratitude has been an ongoing practice for years. It often takes the form of adding a line to my journal about something I am grateful for that day. Sometimes, when life is particularly hard, I will try to speak it out loud, making it more concrete and tangible. I can’t pinpoint when I began this, but it may be one of the more positive results of my childhood: I’m deeply aware of my privilege, and I have little problem admitting it.

In difficult situations, though, there is no time for journaling, so my process works something like this: Feeling stressed? Anxious? Take a breath, look around, note the sounds, the objects around, then try to think of one thing I am grateful for in this moment. It seems simple, but it’s not as easy as it seems when you’re struggling to breathe. If you can manage to do it, however, it does help. Or at least that has been my experience.

On this particularly difficult trip, when LA had had enough of everything after being delayed nearly 2 hours, and we were tossing about in a tin can somewhere over the Great Lakes, I grabbed hold of that mindfulness practice like those yellow life preservers the flight attendants buckle on during the safety demonstrations. As LA shrieked in annoyance and tried to twist his body enough to bang the chair in front of us with his feet, I took a deep breath, focused on the sounds of the engines, the air above my head. My breath slowed, even as my grip on LA continued, and suddenly the haze cleared. I was able to remember the many flights spent watching other mothers struggle with their children and hoping that would one day be my story. Here I was. That longing had become my reality. My entire mood shifted from worrying that he was bothering people to being grateful he existed. An additional bonus was that my mood shifted his mood, and he switched from shrieking to laughing. It was still loud but far more delightful.

Long story short. Mindfulness matters. This does not mean I am eager to do this again any time soon. In fact, LA’s godmother requested I take a trans-atlantic flight to visit her. She has never travelled with a child on an airplane, and it shows. I told her we would have to wait.