So here I am all excited and packed up, set to spend Christmas with my folks after two long years. Never mind the Heathrow close-out, and that flights were operating at a reduced capacity, I was gleeful that mine was going to definitely fly. Out, out, out of this country drowning in snow and morbid tempers attributed to snow.
Hurrah!
The joys of flying, that too, on long haul flights with a 14 month old is nothing new. It's as easy as the Nile flowing into Mississauga. So with a car-seat and my hand baggage containing baby items, and my 10 kg bundle of joy, I attempted passing through immigration, security and customs. Of course, I wished dear OT was there. But he was at work. So it was just us, mommy and son, out in the big bad world of airline hostility (I mean, hospitality).
While I am sure that Steven Slater has not a single mean bone in him, what amazes me about the Airline industry is the blatant understanding that people can be shoved, pushed or even elbowed if they do not have an Abercrombie and Fitch look or better still if they fall into the 'I am nearing my expiration date on planet Earth' category. So what if it is a service oriented business. Any service is a service as long as we reach our destination in one piece. Thank God!
So here I am with my little one, crammed unfortunately into 'Cattle Class' as Mr. Shashi Tharoor would have said. And as the usual norm for a traveller with a toddler, I am seated in the first row in an aisle seat. This is so that I can easily reach out to the basinet provided for my baby who is too big for the basinet. I ask the stewardess to bring down my car-seat which I laboriously tagged along from home to Heathrow to the flight, all by myself, and which she had heartlessly placed in the overhead lockers. I had made a mental note that upon disembarking I would give her a short speech about snatching away a car-seat from a single parent. You don't know what you are doing; it's the Elixir of Life for weary hands.
She said she would do it as soon as she had finished serving an older gentleman. Fair enough. 30 mins passed, and then she came with the dinner trolley. She was intelligent enough to pull out my tray, place my dinner onto the tray and then brusquely leave. Well she had done the same for everyone else sitting near me. Why should she be any different to me? Why, because I had made a mistake of actually reproducing and bringing along my brood, silly me! My eyes must have been popping out of anxiety or whatever, the young man sitting next to me, quickly offered to put down my dinner tray onto the floor, right next to my left leg. I did not care anymore, go ahead dear one, place it anywhere, as long as my boy is fine. After another 20 mins the head stewardess came by, saw my food tray and asked if I needed help. Sure I do, I said. If I was going to try to put any of that food into my mouth, I needed to put my boy somewhere, and the car-seat would be a good place I suggested. She however had a different idea. She said it would be good to make him sit in the basinet, which has hung from the wall, around 3 feet above the floor. In my sane mind I knew it was not the right thing to do that, but then I was assured that a stewardess would stand by while I finish my dinner. I thought it might work. But lo behold, the moment I put my son into the basinet, like any frivolous 14 month old, he just put his leg out in an attempt to get out. So here he was 3 feet above the floor in a basinet which to him was a bath tub, with his leg hanging out. O my God. My heart almost came into my mouth. And by the way the stewardess who was supposed to guard my son had just bent down to do something to her shoes. I was now determined, if not adamant about eating my dinner. I just had to figure out how. I picked up my son, placed him on my lap, put the dinner tray on the floor and switched on Toy Story. Watching Toy Story for the fourth time seems so much fun now.
Around 50 minutes later, with my little fella breaking all hell loose and the kind people, especially the young man in the seat next to me, whose face said - I am never ever going to have children, wrinkling their noses in desperation, I walked into the stewardess' area at the back of the plane and handed over my son to the stewardess. Now normally I would have asked somebody near me to help, because my 5 ft 2" frame is a limitation in situations like these when one has to reach out to the skies (overhead lockers in this case). But the course of the evening had not been a normal one, so I had to resort to extreme measures. She looked shocked, then came along to my seat, pulled down the car-seat uttering the following ' I am doing you a favour by taking down the baggage for you. We normally do not do this'. Dear Lord.
I thought of a fitting reply, but then my maternal instincts took over and I let it go. I smiled at her and merely said 'Really, are you.
I placed my son in his car-seat, rocked it a few times before he fell asleep. Then ate dinner.
When the flight landed, I waited for everyone else to disembark, even the stewardesses, one of whom actually jumped over my hand baggage. So with my little fella on my arm, his car-seat flung around my hand-baggage I got down from the 'New Wings of Oman'. My seven hours of close-to-hell experience had ended.
Oh-man Air!
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