The Trials and Tribs of Cass' First Vacation

We took our annual winter trip to Naples (the one in Florida, not Italy) a tad later in the holiday season this year so that we: a) wouldn’t have to rush around with a 7-and-a-half-month-old on Christmas Day, flying through airports, losing our luggage and our minds b) would have naples all to ourselves, after the throng of Christmas birds depart, and c) would have a few extra days to mentally prepare for Cass’ very first flight.

Here’s why our thought process was seriously flawed, and why we should just learn to peacefully surrender to losing all control of our lives:

a) I can’t seem to remember shit these days, including incidentals like where I haphazardly stuck my boarding pass [answer: folded up like a receipt in my wallet, which has already been screened and is waiting for me at the other side of the security gate], making our trip to the airport—which was not very busy, as hoped—a very ugly ordeal regardless. It went something like this:

Mean Security Guard: M’am, I need your boarding pass.

Me: Just one second... lemme just…

hmmm, hold on, one minute here…

I just had it a second ago [progressively frenzied search of pockets and person]…

Well, Gee, I don’t seem to know where…

MSG: What do you mean, you don’t know where your boarding pass is? [immediately adopting condescending tone] M’am, I’m going to have to ask you to step aside.

M: But [pleading with my eyes and best small, scared voice]…Where?

MSG: Step aside, M’am!

M: If I could just…

MSG: M’am!

M: …talk to my husband…or…der…my bag…[panicking, mumbling, getting dizzy]

Meanwhile, on the other side of the security gate, Ryan is holding Cass with one arm, rifling through my purse and diaper bag with the other. As if I am some sort of disguised uni-bomber, Mean Security Guard refuses to let me communicate with Ryan or even search my bags.

MSG: You need to go back to the front gate! Now, M’am. Conversation over. Step aside. Please move.

[I am frozen]

MSG: You cannot stand here any longer.

M: But [whimpering]… my license is with my boarding pass…How will i…?

MSG: M’am I cannot have you standing here!!!! MOVE NOW!

[I snap]

M: YOU DO NOT TALK TO ME LIKE THAT, DO YOU HEAR ME? I AM A MOTHER. THERE IS MY SON [pointing like an insane person to sweet baby Cass through the gates, like he should be boarding pass enough]. YOU WILL SPEAK TO ME NICELY, DO YOU UNDERSTAND? DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?

It felt truly liberating to drop the mother bomb for the first time. I was preparing to let it fly again, until I look over at Ryan, who is giving me a livid holy-lord-do-not-get-us-arrested-or-i-will-strangle-you-with-bare-hands-look.

Ten minutes stretches into 15 minutes stretches into 20. It occurs to me that we will not be getting on that flight we’re so nervous about, and the end of our 10-day vacation to Naples, Florida is over before it begins. Resigned, I tell a different, much nicer security guard, to whom I suggested that perhaps my boarding pass was stolen from my very hands, that he can stop interviewing passengers. And then, across the field of conveyer belts and scanning screens, Ryan is waving my boarding pass in the air like the victory ensign in a game of capture the flag.

b) Apparently, the official “season” starts right after the holidays, which means we always ended up in the car in creeping traffic, caused by a crush of elderly drivers, during one of Cass’ daily naps. I threw his schedule to the wind while we were on vacation, but we are still paying for it in 5am wake-up calls and abbreviated naplettes.

c) Nothing can really prepare you for changing a soiled diaper in an airplane bathroom on a baby-changing tray that folds down over a clogged airplane toilet during heightened turbulence, while your child repeatedly tries to flip himself onto his stomach so he can tongue the sticky plastic tray that’s making you throw up in your mouth a little bit every time you look at it.

But all the hideous traveling tales aside—and the ripple effects we’re still feeling—we will, without the faintest of doubts, do it again and again and again. No sleep schedule is worth protecting at the cost of seeing Cass eat his first fistful of sand. Or learn to trot a plastic flotation device around a kiddy pool. Or concentrate his face when he tip-toes into tiny waves running over sand. Or get carried around the zoo by his grandma, who is learning to see the world again through the eyes of her very first grandchild. Or ride on the shoulders of his grandpa, from who we’ve never seen such silliness, awe and tender vulnerability, in a way that only a child can inspire.

Yes, Naples, we'll be back.

Cass' First Vacation