Airport Camp

AIRPORT CAMP (or how to survive two very delayed flights and one canceled flight in an airport with a 1 and 3 year old over the course of the highly anticipated two week “vacation” after a year of isolation due to covid 19.

1.   The“Toddler Stare” 

The “Toddler Stare” is real and sometimes offensive to people waiting on delayed flights and general travel bummers. During her “Toddler Stare,” Maya will come closer than socially acceptable (a couple inches from your body), get very still, go eerily solemn in the eyes while locking in on your face without letting go. Covid has added an even creepier component where she squints her eyes without moving her mouth. With only masks in her short life, this is what smiling in public is to her. Her squint is an attempt to manipulate strangers into lowering their mask for a moment to show her their face. When sensing someone is very uncomfortable with the Toddler Stare, laugh loudly and wave a toy to break her concentration :) 

The “Toddler Stare” can also work to your advantage and allow those near you to engage and provide some entertainment for your kid(s). I’ve noticed that ‘kind weirdos’ (any age/occupation/gender/non binary) make the best receivers of the “Toddler Stare” so seek them out when you set up camp* in an airport. They are usually mouthing the words to their music so you notice, have cool styled bedhead, and art sticking out of bags not designed to carry it. Which to me, means these are the folks who steal mediocre Air B&B art (most of which are vague Italian alleys) for no other reason than mildly naughty sentimentality over a trip they loved. This is also why they don’t mind the toddler touching it or even pulling it out of the bag to test a harmless tan crayon. If your kid is being particularly screamy in the “camp” you’ve set up, gift the kind weirdos with the idea and structure of an Air B&B reality show where couples test their compatibility based on which art they swipe. Give them a title for the show with no strings attached. I would go with, “Air B & Won’t Bring Back”

  *camp: blocking off a section of seats with limbs and suitcases and strollers so young children can’t run off. Activities include water sports (filling cups of water and handing them out to be spilled), bumper cars (ramming hot wheels into anything with force and speed in the hopes something can be damaged), archery (shooting unwanted snacks into small places like open suitcases and Mama’s bent leg crease), and campfire stories (around the warm glow of my face generously letting the ipad talk).

2.   Enjoy half listeners. 

I have a background in being heavily listened to - (church youth group and lots of theatre involvement - the after school sport of empathy). And so sometimes I really crave a good half listener. Not someone who is deliberately not listening, but someone who is preoccupied and generously lends you 18 percent of their ear in between checking flight updates on their phone and answering texts from their mother about hydrangea soil. I can’t reciprocate a full listener when surrounded by 1 and 3 year old demands. So a good half listener allows me to walk away from airport social interaction, guilt free. In this particular conversation, I was able to half tell my bird story to a kind weirdo half listening while removing tan crayon from her art and telling me their elbow surgery saga while I half listened and removed the damage of water sports and archery from my thigh/leg crease. *See below for bird story.

*Bird Story: Two weeks ago the back of my head was attacked by a Red Winged Black Bird. It was really scary and bruisy. A message to those birds. Check yourself. I also had a stressful nesting/postpartum time. But I didn’t dive bomb/bruise the back of peoples heads. I managed my feelings with snacks or repeated episodes of West Wing.

3. Ways to avoid thinking about the airplane having mechanical problems: Daydream positively (without slipping into life goals) 

My daydreaming usually begins with useful musings others will definitely benefit from. Like, on our ground floor rooms at school, why say “room oh, oh, five” (005) when we could just say, “room five”? All the time we’d save! I see someone with a Pink shirt and I can’t help thinking about her documentary. …and …that maybe the best thing to do with my life right now would be stand up comedy. (Once you pop a life goal you just can’t stop.) I’d take my family on the road like Pink and I would include all the things I do that are medium/beginner advanced like play French horn, play soccer, sail, and parent. But with the tour fame I’d receive by the 7th major city performance (where, in case you’ve forgotten, I play French Horn, play soccer, sail and parent) I’d have to worry about media haters hashtagging me #jackofalltradesmasterofnone - let alone the venue stages that might leak due to the sailing stuff. Suddenly I am having real full fledged internal crisis about whether to finish the final five cities on the tour or go home and call it quits. 

At least I’m not thinking about falling out of the sky anymore. I try to shift away from life goals and back to useful solution daydreams like the ground-floor classrooms – but instead I just worry about the stove we may have left on...or worse, the ice cream that didn’t get put back in the freezer. Clearly I have work to do in this area.

4. Try not to say “no” to toddlers. Instead, creatively imply it. 

I try to wave my hand or tell Maya, “uh uh” or “nah nah”. She laughs at this sad McCuly Culkian attempt at power and responds to me with her unique version of, “not gonna do what you say.” This is a cross between a deadpan minor British character in a major mystery and another deadpan minor British character in a major mystery. It is subtle and genius and that’s because she is a wise Yoda baby.

Here is the “Maya No” play by play 

-Maya looks at me and does a giant chin nod (chest to sky repeat)

-I smile

-She points to the iphone chord next to an airport non ‘kind weirdo’ 

-I wave my hand and say “nah nah”

-She smirks and shakes her head left/right mocking some agreement 

-She reaches for it again

-I hide my smile

-She tilts her head and shrugs

-I shake my head “uh uh”

-She points to the chord a third time

-I say, “Hey was that a bird outside?” (there are only planes)

-She doesn’t look and shakes her head “No Ma, no bird”

-She reaches for the chord and sighs like “I know you’re trying and also, I’m going to touch this.”

-She dances on her tiptoes and sticks her nose at me and smiles

-“Nah nah!” I say one more time.

-And then she pulls the lady’s chord out of the wall

How is Maya this subtly terrible and hilarious? I have no idea. Just like I have no idea how marathon people feel led to place bumper stickers on their cars telling us “26.2 Miles? (aka “this is the maximum length I run which is very very far isn’t it cool that I do that?)”?

There’s a coyness in Maya’s “no” that has me in frustrated confusion. Kind of like 60 degree temperatures revel in getting me to put on and take off my cardigan every other minute. Just kidding I don’t have a cardigan, I have eight. One for every day of the week assuming God finally answers my prayer to make an extra day in order for adult gymnastics classes to take actualize for me.

Anyway, this was a bullet number without a lot of advice, BUT I know that if I would’ve said “no” right away she would miss the non verbal communication skill building to write notes across the aisle in middle school without getting caught (yes she will need to write notes she will not have a phone in middle school).

5.  Don’t shy away from being “that parent” (the one who brings EVERYTHING and the one who can publicly cry). 

I swore I’d never be that parent when sitting in the movie theatre back in college watching Best Of Show and laughing at the “busy bee” toy needed to keep the one couples’ dog from going nuts. They’d left it miles away. But Oh. I’m that person. Note in my defense: Maya was a horrible sleeper for her first 11-12 months (the entire pandemic) waking up 3 plus times a night and there were no Target or Starbucks runs to calm this stress. So, I’ve experienced the craze of what sleep deprivation will cause a person to do. The answer is ANYTHING to get better sleep. So on our current trip we’ve brought tin foil and scotch tape to black out windows, back up loveys, at minimum 6 different types of snacks in my purse, new toys that are flat and packable, white noise machines so the world can sound like a womb anywhere, and Maya’s special foam mattress.  This makes for horrible travel schlepping and decent sleep on vacation from all.

We had a gamers level series of complicated flight patterns planned in this 2-3 week period to see lots of family and each get a few days to ourselves. If something feels even SLIGHTLY tricky for an adult, you are in it ten times too deep for the three and under crowd. About two thirds of the way through it became clear that after our third delayed 9 plus hour day in the airport ending in canceled flight and difficult behaving kids, we had to just go home the next day after a night in a Buffalo hotel. My solo trip immediately was in Jeopardy. And I’ll tell you what I didn’t do. I didn’t help Rob hustle to get a hotel, rebook flights home instead of to more visits, or carry stuff. I just sat down and wept an ugly cry that even the ‘kind weirdos’ leaned away from. The thought of not having a break by myself to FINALLY see a few far away friends after raising a new baby and toddler in this fucking pandemic?! I lost it. Maya mirrors faces so she started crying but stopping every other second because she was wondering why we were doing this. Solly laughed, then tilted his head, then hit me a few times because he didn’t know what to do with the puddle I’d become either. I continued crying, later realizing that my kids rarely see me sad and yet I sing the Daniel Tiger troupes over and over again about it being okay to be sad sometimes. Airport Camp needs to hold space for all feelings… Rob (#hero) eventually found me a flight that would leave from Chicago only a few hours after I traveled back home with the fam from Buffalo the next morning. It wasn’t till sitting across from a dear friend eating dinner that we both realized we don’t model emotions like sadness or anger much. And my guilt and embarrassment about my meltdown started to fade.

There were beautiful memories made this summer in New Jersey, New York and California. And the horrible travel days were worth the bonding with family and friends whom we hadn’t hugged in too damn long. I hope all the ‘kind weirdos’ had good trips too and found nice places to hang their art.

Epilogue: current 1yr & 3yr old stats

Maya (16 months) is my Maggie Simpson baby. She can’t talk but she solemnly nods at everything delivered to her in an upward inflection like she understands ideas and conversation beyond her year. There’s something so damn lovable about her. A child who likes cuddles. She has these deep eyes that you think know all but wisely choose to only say Mama, Dada and Grandma which leaves tons of respect for her self control because I know she’s sitting on like at least 18 more.

Solly (3.25) is currently my creative thinker and deep feeler. He comes up with spontaneous songs and wants to research storms when he sees clouds and rattles off the things that make a storm form like it’s nothing. Going on a 14 month obsession with the Cars movies - the tiny models are his comfort item like ice cream is mine. Not afraid to dance in public and warm the hearts of July 4th park goers.