My husband turned 30 in 2007, and I had the genius idea of surprising him with a trip to England for a present. We had lived there during that wonderful time right after getting married and right before having children and had longed to go again ever since we moved back to the States. However, what made this idea SO brilliant is that at the time we had an 18-month-old son, and I planned on bringing him along…overseas…on an 8 hour flight. Brilliant, indeed.
We packed all of the necessary evils of traveling abroad with a small child (before the advent of iPads and smart phones in everyone’s pockets) – DVD player, toys, snacks, books, etc, etc.
In case you’re unfamiliar, this is what the seat area of two adults traveling with a toddler as a lap child looks like:
We had supplies shoved into every space and seat-back pocket available to us. Crumbs and unrecognizable goldfish littered the floor. Books, the DVD player, sippy cups and probably Twizzlers were overflowing out of the seat-back pockets. We could hardly open our trays thanks to the amount of items shoved into them. Without getting too far into the details, the flight over to England wasn’t terrible. We slept a bit, watched some movies, played and entertained each other as much as we could. Our arrival into Heathrow Airport was sometime in the early morning and through slightly jet lagged eyes, we attempted to gather all of our belongings and exit the plane as quickly as we could.
When you fly internationally, you need to go through the customs area to have your passport checked to enter the country. Typically this area contains long lines of people coming from a diverse variety of destinations and it can be stressful, frustrating and loud.
In preparation for this process, I reached into the backpack I was carrying to pull out our passports ahead of time. I didn’t find them. I asked Mike if he had put them into another bag. He said he had not.
The color of my face in that moment must have quickly given away what I was realizing, because all Mike said was “Oh. My. God. JESSICA!!” I could picture our three passports right where I had left them – deep in a seat-back pocket on the airplane we just disembarked.
“What do we do?! What do we do!?” I cried. “I guess you have to go back to the gate and get them!” Probably even before he finished that sentence, I had dropped my bag and took off running back in the direction we had come from.
I had no plan. I just wanted to get our passports! I kept thinking about what might happen if we didn’t find them – would they ever let us out of the airport like in that weird Tom Hanks movie?! Would they immediately ship us back to the States? I couldn’t handle another 8-hour flight in one day! Meanwhile, I was running back toward where we had entered the airport from our arrival gate, but nothing looked familiar. The hallway contained closed door after closed door and groups of passengers headed in the opposite direction. I felt like a fish swimming upstream. Somewhere along the way, I found a uniformed airport employee and attempted to explain our situation while trying to catch my breath. She told me that I needed to go to the connection desk and pointed me in its direction.
Of course there was a line about 10 people deep when I arrived at the connection desk. I waited impatiently going over every possibility of problems I was about to face. The plane could have easily been cleaned, boarded with passengers already departing to another destination and our passports would be gone – possibly forever! Thankfully the woman working at the connection desk was a kind person. She listed to my story and did some investigating into where the plane was in that moment. Somehow – someway – that plane had been moved to a location off the tarmac to be cleaned. It hadn’t left the country; in fact it hadn’t even departed Heathrow airport! I’d never been so relieved in my life. The only two obstacles keeping me from those passports were the possibility that someone found them and removed them and my inability to run out onto the tarmac and grab them from the airplane myself. Fortunately there was an airline employee who was willing to do this – legally – for me. The wait while he went out to the plane was excruciating, but after about 20 minutes he was back with our 3 precious passports in hand!
Mike and Benjamin were stranded in the customs area and I had no way to communicate with them (remember, this was a time before everyone had internationally compatible phones), so I hurried back as quickly as I could. My legs were fatigued from the running I had done before, and the adrenaline I had built up in my frenzy had begun to fade. My energy was totally depleted, and as I was trying to get to them, I felt like I was in one of those dreams where you’re trying to run, but you are only able to move in slow motion. It was maddening. When I finally reached them Mike had a look on his face that said, “I will never forgive you for this!” I can only imagine how difficult it was to entertain and contain Benjamin for that whole time in such a busy and crowded area. The only thing he verbally said to me came through his gritted teeth, “You will never be in charge of the passports again.” Lest you think he’s never had a similar #DadFail, I must mention the time he left the Green Bay Packers game tickets on the refrigerator and only realized it when we were over an hour away from home.
We passed through customs quickly and without any incident. The rest of our trip visiting England was delightful. It was fun showing Benjamin the places we loved, especially when we took him to Winchester, the town where we had once lived. Even without my little mishap, touring around another country with a toddler was challenging and unfortunately something he now has no memory of, but it was also a trip we will never forget.
