I am a veteran. No, I haven’t fought in any wars, but I have battle scars all the same. What’s my tour of duty? Four and a half years of international travel with my son, now a kindergartner. I have taken so many pan-Atlantic flights alone with my son that I rarely think about the angst, anxiety, and pure hell I went through before I honed my act—before I figured out the tricks of the trade. I can say with certainty that I now know a vast array of tricks and strategies to entice, distract, and otherwise enthrall infants, toddlers and preschoolers when navigating airports, enduring hours on a plane, and waiting at the dreaded baggage claim or car rental offices with tired, cranky kids in tow. I’ve outlined what I’ve learned so you can be sure to have a smooth trip that will be as hassle free as possible. But first, I have to start with how it all began:
In the beginning—when I first started all this international travel—I thought I was somewhat prepared. I mean, I had flown from the West Coast to the East Coast twice with my infant without too many problems. I soon discovered that those five-hour flights were a piece of cake after my twenty-four-hour-trip (yes, twenty-four hours!) from Los Angeles to Carcassonne, France. It was December 2002 and William was thirteen months old. My mother-in-law, who lived in Saudi Arabia at the time, begged us to meet her in a remote village about thirty kilometers away from Carcassonne, the walled city with a working castle. Compared to Los Angeles, it sounded like a romantic, exciting trip and we’d be staying in an old Roman town, inside the actual tower where monks used to live, adjacent to an ancient Roman Catholic church. We thought it would be a great break. Little did we realize what we were in for and how ill-prepared we were.
First of all, our flight was delayed and we missed our connecting flight. We had to fly from Los Angeles to San Francisco. We waited in San Fran for an hour before being able to fly to New York’s JFK airport. This required an hour wait and security check that frightened us terribly as 9-11 was still so fresh in everyone’s minds. From New York, we flew to Paris’s Charles De Gaulle airport where we had a two-hour layover. This layover was brutal as it’s a smoke-infested airport and I have asthma. We ended up hanging out in the baggage claim area where doors opened and closed chasing after our toddler who had learned how to walk two months earlier.
