The Stories of Us

Catching up to Kate, already on a business trip, found me traveling solo with the boys a bunch of times.  But the image in your head right now isn’t exactly right.

Think nursing baby.

And if you’re a guy, traveling solo with a nursing baby, it gets especially interesting.  You need stuff that is … unusual … in a guys bag.

Traveling to Ireland was my first solo.  Loek at 4 months old also meant that I was a parent for 4 months – pretty green.  As I went through the scanner, child in my arms, I wondered why this charade?  They were going to wand us anyway; why the extra step?

Whatever.

Ending up on the other side, the 14 year old TSA officer (not 14, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t shave), trusty wand tapping against his leg, said to me, “You can put the child over there.” pointing to the stained carpet next to the plexiglass barrier.  Honestly, more than disgusting, Loek would have been trampled if I’d done that.

TSA check points, not exactly spacious places.

We had this moment, TSA and I, looking at each other.  I follow rules (mostly), listen to authority (mostly), try to make it easy for folks to do their jobs (almost always and especially in these situations).  But this was not an option.  The swirl of activity around those scanners, shoes on and off, people looking for their bags, getting pulled out of line – just chaos.

Some form of, ’Yeah, not going to happen’ was about out of my mouth when 50+ year old female supervisor stepped over kindly and offered to hold Loek; looking at man/boy with the distinct ‘WTF’ raised eyebrow.

Super awkward.

But I was also going through security with a dozen bags of frozen breast milk – as a solo dude, with a 4 month old.

Things were going to get more interesting.

The insulated freezer bag I carried held bottles, nipples and the tiny bags of breast milk – milk that Kate spent weeks pumping before we left.  There was truly nothing in my world that could replace it.  I treated those bags like the blood transfusion bags I use to carry throughout the hospital.  But that anxiety – in this situation – it wasn’t working in my favor. 

TSA sees a dude with a 4 month old, carrying a bunch of little bags of white liquid, treating like it all like a sacred relict.  Can you imagine the risk assessment that was going through TSA’s head?  Of course TSA wants put their hands all over them.

I was now into my second super awkward situation with TSA.

We settled on me showing them each bag and putting a drop from milk from the bottle on my arm and tasting it.

It was the best we could come up with and in fairness to TSA, this was an impossible situation.  If you are enough of an ass to mess with a plane full of people, I’m pretty sure you’d have no respect for breast milk.

(And seriously, what kind of animal doesn’t respect breast milk.)

Travel forces those situations on you.  You advocate for yourself when you really don’t know the rules and, in some measure, give yourself to the outcome.  That is part of getting out of the comfort zone, is giving up control.  And most often I find that it is giving up control on things that don’t really matter.

Terminal 5 in Heathrow, London is big with an amazing expansive balcony giving great views of the plane activity.  The flight from the US with a 2 year old and a 4 year old was, easy, but still, Heathrow, with restaurants and space to move, was a relief.

Arin was new-ish to walking and I wasn’t adjusting particularly quickly to this reality.  Two kid-brains on 4 legs going different directions; not fair.

It was busy.  The world moves through Heathrow.

Walk by an emptying plane, or stand in a waiting area, and suddenly you can be enveloped by a completely different culture.  Clothing, mannerisms, smells, languages in a group of hundreds swallowing everything that is familiar until they slowly are blended back into the rest of the world.   For a moment though, you can breath their air; sense the unfamiliar.  It is an awesome experience, but intense.

And along with Casablanca and JFK, in that way, Heathrow was one of the most ethnically intense places I’ve been.

But it is also not lost on me that what else is happening.  We are blending our biome’s.  Wet markets in China are an abomination, but each of us human beings is a unique biological island and whether we are swapping spit behind the bleachers or standing in a crowded waiting room, we are blending our biologies.  Each person biologically ‘exploring’ every neighbor.  Mmmmmm.

Knowing all this, we are hand-sanitizer careful when traveling.  But they are kids, and they have their own brains, and legs and …. They’re kids.

And I wasn’t aware that Arin, with his new legs, could also Houdini himself across spaces in seconds.

I should have been.

A few months earlier, I’d found him at the top of a ladder leaning against my shed – he stopped climbing when he ran out of rungs 10+ feet up.  (And what parent looks up when searching for their toddler?)  That was after he’d slipped away, into the woods, only to get hung up by brambles feet from the bog.  At 2 years old!

It is good kids are so cute and my myocardium is intact.

But in an airport, I was sure my radar was on high.  We were on the balcony overlooking the lower food court.  The planes beyond, Giraffe, the restaurant, to the left, I was lifting Loek up when Arin turned off his transponder and slipped away.

It only was a minute, but looking down the balcony to my right, there he was walking … no … kind of, shimmying … head up … what is he …?!

The hand rails were smooth, brightly polished stainless steel.  Arin was moving along the rail with his tongue happily licking the smooth surface.

There is an awful moment, when you realize the deed is done; the die has been cast.  What is going to happen, is set.

Hands from the entire globe had graced those surfaces.  Now my son was going to challenge his immune system to all of them.

Nice parenting, Dad.

You’re apoplectic inside, but what can you do?  I bet it did feel nice and cool on his tongue, I couldn’t argue with that after 6 hours in the air.  And I’d not covered pathogens with him yet – other than some things were “yuck”;  like dog poop.

Just happily moving along the railing – other folks taking a step back as this tow-headed child reveled in the cool slick sensation on his tongue.

He got sick.  Nothing scary, but absolutely sick for several days.

Now, that is lore in our family; Arin and the immune system that survived.  The immunes system that seemed, from then on, to miss every cold that got the rest of us got.  Arin the rock.

Sitting here, in my familiar world, I’m realizing I’ve become too comfortable again.  You don’t get these stories if you don’t put yourself out there.  When the train is late, it’s now 2 am and your family, in sleeping bags, on the platform, is playing cards.  The crazy dude who follows you into a beer festival, telling you and your kids about the prisons he’s been in.  The bike ride, kids on the back seat, that suddenly becomes a race to see if you can cross the German border and still catch the 1am train back home – 2 hours away.

Each with its share of bad weather, sickness, injuries, deep fatigue, arguments and all manner of discomforts.

Still, in those times are the best stories.  The super cringy ones’ that bring dinner to a laughing standstill, the ones’ that teach or drop jaws.

This is my vision of what family and indeed communities are built on; what makes them so cool.  The common history, the ritual of recall, the stories that we tell together about each other.

The stories of us.