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It was hour 23 of traveling. Our plane had been delayed for an hour in Addis Ababa, and that had set off a cascade of compounding delays, exhausting layovers, and disrupted sleep that had now lasted for the better part of what felt like an eternity. The lead flight attendant had come over the loudspeaker for the third time in as many minutes to announce, in English this time, that the plane had begun its descent into Paris and that we would need to buckle our safety belts as we had—thankfully—been shown how to do at the beginning of our flight, despite the invention of the safety belt in the mid-1800s, and the very limited changes in operational instructions in the interim.
As the flight attendants started to make their way through the aisles to ensure compliance, we knew the time bomb we’d been sitting on for the past 23 hours was about to blow.We began to prepare our littlest traveler, “OK … just about time for your seat belt … are you ready?” Hard pass. “OK. Time for your seat belt.” Thanks, but no thanks. “We have to put our seat belts on now, the plane is about to land.” We continued to negotiate with our own fatigue-induced lunatic promising everything from Skittles and M&Ms to computers, cars, blackjack, and hookers. In the meantime, a crew of well-meaning but terribly inconveniently timed and inconveniently placed flight attendants began forming a bottleneck around our row. “mmm…hiiiii…” a cacophony of m and long i-sounds. “If he could just put his seat belt on, that would be greaaaaat.”
It was like being trapped in Office Space only with four different Bill Lumberghs. “YES! I GOT THE MEMO AND I WILL INCLUDE A COVER SHEET ON MY TPS REPORT!”So as pressure mounted, we finally decided to hard line it—and that’s when all hell broke loose. Our already-cranky, sleep deprived toddler had hit a wall, and would not take one more indignity. He wailed like I’d never seen: screeching, scratching, biting, and literally frothing at the mouth. My wife and I attempted to restrain him, but it only made things worse.
The frustrations of the past eight weeks (56 days, 1,344 hours, 80,640 minutes, 4,838,400 seconds) away from home all culminated in the tantrum to end all tantrums—and in that moment I thought, “Why do I do this to myself? Why in the hell do I travel with children who seem to hate it, and who all seem to hate me … and who, if we’re being completely honest, I’m not always completely fond of, myself?”
My Facebook profile is awash with pictures showing us visiting fantastic cultural landmarks, feeding squirrel monkeys and sloths in Panama, watching hippos from boats in Ethiopia, or … being excruciatingly hot in Burkina Faso. But that’s only part of the story.What Facebook pictures cannot capture is the absolute shit-storm it took to get there: the week-long period of mourning that my 16-year-old went through when she left her Kindle on the airplane in Turkey. The pictures cannot capture the newfound talent for mimicking acquired by my 7-year-old, and there is no way Facebook can fully capture the hours-long tantrum on our plane ride to Paris.
The pictures do not capture the thousand different reasons my wife and I have contemplated divorce during these trips (including my insistence that the toddler wear the seat belt in the aforementioned anecdote, despite the fact that the flight attendants were seated and would never know if we bent the rules a bit). And they cannot capture how thoroughly done I am with each trip when the summer comes to a close and the academic year starts anew. If I do not cop to those things, I am a liar by omission.And yet—each year, after nine months have passed, I’m ready to start again. And it’s not because I forget. Seeing pictures of the kids at the Trevi Fountain does not conjure pink-coated images of a perfect family vacation. I remember the sweltering heat. I remember being exhausted from carrying my second on my back for miles on end. And I remember my heel hurting so bad I thought I would gnaw my foot off.
But still we go. Because as a society, we have lost the ability to take the good with the bad, and to see the value that comes from both—and I want something more for my kids—and for myself. In the age of Internet and social media, we have come to see friendships and social relationships as a thing of convenience. We invest when times are good and divest when things go bad. We block, delete, and unfollow people who annoy, challenge, or disrupt—and as a result, our Facebook pages are carefully preened echo chambers of the pleasant and the like-minded.
Socially, we have lost the ability not only to be challenged, but to appreciate the individuals and the situations that provide that challenge. As a dad, my children are my troop. My wife and I are troop leaders. Facing hard times with a common goal helps us learn to rely and depend on one another. Challenges help us bond, and prepare us for the other, real challenges that life may throw our way. Like the first couple years of having a child, you don’t bond with your baby despite countless sleepless nights and screaming fits, but rather because of them.
It’s the same with travel. My 16-year-old is sullen and morose. But she is the only person in the family who I can count on to be awake at all hours of the night, on the airplane—to keep me company, as I while away the hours while my two-year-old sleeps soundly on my lap. My seven-year-old is bratty. But he is the only person in the family who can entertain his two-year-old brother at the park, patiently helping him up ladders that are too tall for him, and slides that are too narrow for me. And my two-year-old helps me to look beyond stuffy museums, for undiscovered parts of new cities where kids can run free—and helps me to bond with locals over the woes of parenting crazy, strong-willed children. In exchange, the kids learn lessons of patience, kindness, and resilience, and have experiences that will—I hope—ast a lifetime.
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