Travels with Genevieve: A perfect flight until arrival

Originally published Jan. 13, 2017, in the Times Herald-Record of Middletown, N.Y.

5:36 p.m. Wednesday: Our landlord is an 81-year-old Cuban woman who has been married for 60 years, scales high walls to tend to her garden, raves about the senior center’s spaghetti dinners (“It’s good”) and told us she was “abuela” when we announced we were pregnant. She’s a funny, energetic sort.

Sarah sees her as we put 8-week-old Genevieve into the car. “We’re leaving for Texas.”

“You drive?”

“No, no, no, we’re flying.”

For once our landlord doesn’t say anything. She just glares at Sarah like a puppy that can’t compute that its owner has run out for lottery tickets. Sarah thinks she tried to shake her head, maybe mouth “no, no, no, no, no,” but it never comes out. And we’re off.

6:58 p.m. Wednesday: We arrive at our friends’ house in Maplewood, N.J., a place to sleep before our 6:30 a.m. flight to Austin, Texas. Genevieve is crabby. Pizza arrives. We go over strategy.

“If we get her to sleep by 9, she’ll be up by midnight. Then we put her back down by 1 and she’s up just before we have to leave. We’ll feed, burp, get her in the car seat, get in the Uber, she’ll fall back asleep. Done.”

9:15 p.m. Wednesday: It takes a little longer than we anticipated to get Genevieve to sleep.

3:45 a.m. Thursday: It’s dark. We’re tired. But our alarms are ringing and we need to move carefully so we don’t wake Genevieve early. We dress, bring our bags to the door, request the Uber and, at the last possible second, gently wake up Genevieve for a feeding.

4:15 a.m. Thursday: It works. It actually works. Genevieve is in the car seat. The bags are out front. The Uber pulls up. Off to Newark.

5:09 a.m. Thursday: We’re already through security despite not knowing where to exit the elevator. Genevieve doesn’t mind the magic security wand. We have more new bags than James Brown.

But we’re early. Extremely early.

Somehow it doesn’t matter. Genevieve is among the youngest people in American history to be on an airplane, which means staff members show extra courtesy. I board early with the gate-checked stroller and car seat, while Sarah waits until the very end to walk on with the sleeping baby. Flight attendants routinely ask if we need anything. We don’t. Genevieve sleeps, eats, sleeps and eats.

We painstakingly ran through every detail and over-planned beyond imagination — which was worth it because we were bringing on an 8-week-old baby — and nothing went wrong.

That is until we got to Austin and Genevieve caught one look at her smiling grandfather. Game over.

We’ve learned pretty quickly that you can run through details and plan until your fingers bleed, but babies don’t care. They’re not considering your spreadsheets. They’re not consulting your Google Drive. Sometimes everything works, and what do you know, Genevieve loves being in public places where strangers outnumber family (she gets that from her dad).

And sometimes things fall apart, like when Genevieve is surrounded only by family (again, like her dad).

That’s amazing. You’re given this creature, and eight weeks later you’ve acquired an entirely new language, a new set of directions and a completely new appreciation for human behavior.