No Class In First Class

When my young daughter, Ari, was a mere 17 months old, we took a little holiday vacation to Miami the week before Christmas to relax. (Ha.)

Things went swimmingly while we were there for the first few days. So much so, that my husband decided to extend the vacation a few more days until December 23rd. But more on that later.

So every day we would take Ari down to the pool with the stroller to make sure she had her nap. Since she was so over-stimulated being at the pool, this would entail me strolling her up and down the beach boardwalk until she fell asleep. Then I would carefully stroll her back into the pool area, park the stroller, order the frozen margarita Bucket O’ Booze (not kidding – it was literally served in a bucket with two straws) and my husband Joe and I sipped on that while we soaked up the South Beach rays and marveled at Bella’s (our then five year-old daughter) pool noodle techniques. And did I mention that we would pray that some other fun-lovin’ kid didn’t scream too loud as he/she was cannonballing the afternoon away?

Needless to say, Ari’s naps ended up being about 45 minutes to one hour per day, when she was used to getting (and should have been getting) at least two and-a-half hours per day. But we were having so much fun being in South Beach at the Lowes swimming pool, that we thought nothing of it. Every night Ari would seem very restless and unlike herself until about the fifth night when she had a COMPLETE meltdown. And where? At one of the chi-chi outdoor restaurants on Lincoln Road, where we had decided to order lobster and be all cool and Miami-like. After she grabbed a handful of butter and pulled it through her hair like gel, we grabbed our mohawked little terror, practically straight-jacketed her into the stroller and ended up having one of the roughest night’s sleep thus far.

She was completely overtired. And instead of one of us (i.e. ME) being selfless and taking her up to the room to nap, we subjected her to such half-ass sleep that by end of our now extended trip, she was beyond herself – outside of her body – with exhaustion.

At the airport on the way home, my husband was self-checking us in and says, “It’s only $xx more if we upgrade to first class. Let’s do it.” I was in no position to argue. Sounded great.

So here’s how this went down:

- Next to me, Bella was completely obsessed with the giant seats-turned-recliners with all the buttons and doodads, that all she kept doing THE ENTIRE THREE HOUR FLIGHT was pushing those buttons and extending and retracting the chair. Bbbbzzzzz. Bbbbbbzzzzzz. Bbbbbbzzzz. Bbbbbbbbzzz. The glass of red wine I stupidly decided to order ended up in my lap and all over my seat – she was so excited to show me a NEW button she had found for the headrest – so I had to sit on a folded up quilt in my wine soaked jeans.

- Ari (running completely on fumes at this point) was running circles around the free-standing partition that separated the passenger seating with the flight attendant’s galley. Round and round and round and round and round she went on turbo. When we tried to calm her down by popping a pacifier in her mouth she yanked it out and threw it clear across first class. It landed behind my husband’s seat, across the aisle from me. The flight attendants (half trying to be helpful and half desperately trying to stop her from terrorizing the entire flight) were directing my husband (who was now forcefully holding a kicking Ari in his lap) to retract the seat as much as he could to free up the space behind his seat so they can search for the pacifier. By now Joe’s knees were to his chin and two flight attendants were elbow deep behind the seat, but couldn’t extract the pacificer from the depths of metal and wiring back there. Ari was screaming. Bbbbbbzzzzzz, bbbbbbzzzzzz, bbbbbbbzzzzzzzzz.

- A man’s voice – the pilot? – is heard on the intercom, “Parents, can you please control your children. Thank you.” I looked around and caught the white parts of some eyeballs, some glaring right at me. Bbbbzzzzz. Bbbbbbzzzz. I stunk like a whino.

- At this point, Joe had had it with Ari, who was stuck on him like flies on shit. She was clutching his neck, hanging on him, crying, whining and screaming. And I had no more pacifiers with me. A bottle of milk didn’t work. Joe was now yelling at me to take her and give him a break. He tried to pass her off to me across the aisle, which set Ari into another tailspin. The veins in Joe’s temples were throbbing. Bbbbzzzz. Bbbbbbbzzzzz. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I desperately wanted to suck the wine out of the fibers of my jeans.

-On it went like this until FINALLY, finally, when the plane started its descent and began to rattle its way into the tundra-like weather conditions while landing in a sub-zero, wind-chilled Chicago, we saw her eyes start to close as she was sprawled across Joe’s lap. We both looked at each other wearily. She was out. So out, she didn’t wake up as we deplaned, or waited 45 minutes for our stroller, or took a cab in –5 degrees weather, or when we laid her in her bed.

And now, at midnight, came part two of my punishment for going on vacation and extending it until December 23rd. I laid in Bella’s bed until she fell asleep, her body still buzzing from that contraption of a seat. Then I hauled ass downstairs to our storage to bring up ALL of the gifts I still had to wrap for Christmas morning, because tomorrow I had to make a cake and visit my in-laws, where we would exchange gifts that I needed to wrap now. I dove into bed face first at 2am and imagined diving into the pool at the Lowes again, dreaming of another sorely needed vacation.

-Cathy