Alice's Airplane Adventure

“It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.”
— Ernest Hemingway

We love traveling, and we knew that if we had kids we'd still want to travel. We're lucky to have family dispersed in different areas of the States -- South Bend, Atlanta, Detroit, Lewisburg, Charlotte -- and we really enjoy those trips.

Jeremy and I have had long conversations on road trips, listened to audio books like Dune, Ender's Game, A Song of Ice and Fire (my second time reading it and his first), The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man's Fear, The Slow Regard of Silent Things, The Legend of Drizzt, and more that I've forgotten. We're listening to American Gods right now. I've also sung him many renditions of Billy Joel songs -- he's always so appreciative of that.

With Alice (who's almost two), driving at night has been the best way to travel. It's easier with fewer cars on the road and a sleeping toddler.

But for our trip to Detroit to visit Jeremy's sister Laura and brother-in-law Nino, we decided to fly. This turned out to be a good plan for a lot of reasons, one of which was that just a couple of weeks before we made an unexpected nighttime drive to South Bend for a funeral. An hour or so in the air was definitely preferable to 10 on the road.

The flight to Detroit was fantastic. I was pre-checked, so I got to breeze through security with Alice and our stuff. She slept the entire flight there, and everything was great.

We had a great time at Detroit. Our favorite part was a trip to the Detroit Zoo!


On the flight back, she had just woken up from a shorter-than-normal nap, but she was still in pretty good spirits. I breezed through security again and had high expectations for an uneventful flight home.

There was, however, an event.

Before we left the gate, Alice was seated in my lap looking out the plane window and asking "What is that?" about the same two or three things over and over. She kept shifting around to talk to Jeremy, read her book, sip some juice, and then back to the window.

A minute later, she started whining. Not a complaining whine. The kind of whine notifying you that something is really wrong. A second later, I felt was was wrong. It was warm. It was wet.

It was pee.

We quickly stripped off her leggings -- I didn't have a change of clothes for her in my carry-on. My jeans were wet. I didn't have a change of clothes for myself either.

We laid her down to change her diaper right there, and the flight attendant chose that very moment of parental anxiety to stop by and be sure we knew what to do with her in case of an emergency. Lady, THIS is the emergency! She pretended not to notice our state of disarray and finally left us alone.

Alice was pantsless that flight. I couldn't be (for some strange reason), so I wore my wet jeans that smelled like pee.

But hey, we made it.