They’ve called final boarding over the loudspeaker. We go from tired and bored to full-fledged panic. The logical man I once was, thinking there are so many people from our flight in this security line, has disappeared. In his place, a lunatic ready to mow down a line of people with a pram… and then sit next to them on a four-hour flight.
Our little girl is in happy oblivion. She’s wearing her Thumper outfit and has been thumping her legs on her pram happily for the last hour, entertaining the bored people in this enormous queue.
Grand Cayman has a small airport by most standards. Not as small as our sister islands but small enough that you can usually arrive at the airport an hour and a half before take-off and still have time to be bored airside. Saturdays are the exception. Some officials in their infinite wisdom have allowed the airlines to book a bunch of flights back-to-back around lunchtime, rather than spread them out over the day. Chaos, regularly making the weekly headlines in the local newspaper to no resolve.
An official assures the panicked flyers that he has a radio directly to the boarding counter and we will make our flight. It does not soothe the panic in the eyes around us, nor our own. But sure enough, he starts to calmly rearrange the line and get us through.
We get to security. Stroller gets jammed in its bag, laptop and liquids in hand like a pro. Inevitably, everyone else has not realized they were going through airport security and are now fumbling about with their things.
A lady with a baby pushes in front of me. Um, excuse me, my lady with a baby is already waiting on the other side! I try to tell my face to be friendly, acting like there is no rush at all, and step in line behind her.
An elderly man walks into my wife as we try to redress and repack our bags as quickly as possible. We are reprimanded for rushing even though we were standing still when he walked into us.
Undeterred by our reprimand, we actually do begin to run now. Of course, the gate is the furthest from security, but thankfully, the airport is small, and we’re there a minute later.
My wife looks at me in horror: “She’s pooped! We need to change her.”
The man at the gate calms us down and says we have plenty of time; they won’t leave. So we do an emergency diaper change at the boarding gate. Changing her like she’s a Formula 1 car in the pit lane at Gate 1.
Finally boarded, we sanitize every inch of our seats like we’re people who have lived through a pandemic, while my wife explains to the people behind us that we’re new parents and don’t want a sick child. They kindly encourage her to clean away. The man beside us looks nervous about sitting next to a baby.
We’re nervous too. She hasn’t eaten in a while, and my wife was trying to time her feeding for takeoff. The sucking helps babies’ ears clear so they aren’t in pain and therefore don’t scream. But if we don’t take off soon, she’ll be screaming for her food. We distract her with cuddles as the plane crawls along in a new runway queue we have joined.
Just in time, the wheels go up. Our girl eats; she doesn’t seem too bothered by the pressure changes. We try to calm down from the panic by eating our tiny bag of pretzels and drinking our little apple juice. 🧃
Our daughter— who doesn’t poop that often due to being breast-fed— now decides it’s a great time for her to make another. The moment the seatbelt sign goes off I’m up. I now have the exciting privilege of changing her in the cleanest of places, an aeroplane toilet.
My wife has meticulously prepared for this, so I have a changing pack ready to go. First, I must wait for a man who clearly had some nasty food at the airport and is now depositing it on the plane. My daughter and I slide into the stall as I hold my breath. I pull down the changing table, throw down a disposable doggy pee pad to cover it, and get to work. My daughter thinks this new place is very exciting and tries to touch every surface. I keep batting her hands back towards the safety of the pad, I get her cleaned up and we make our way back to our seats, eyeing the other poop depositor as we walk down the aisle.
Now for the final and most difficult challenge with our little girl. Sleep! We spend the next hour trying to lull her to sleep as she issues some complaints about her parents to the people around us. We eventually succeed and try to take a moment to enjoy the feeling of accomplishment. It’s in this moment that the person in front of me, a white blonde lady with Mandarin tattoos she probably doesn’t understand, reclines her seat.