“Why don’t we do a family camping trip?”
My sister had started planning for my fourteenth birthday six months ahead. She wanted the whole extended family there. Dani wanted to do something special, too.
“What do you want to do?” they asked.
I didn’t have an answer.
Then in November, my phone rang at work.
It was Dani.
“Let’s go to Germany and bike down the Rhine River like you did a long time ago.”
“We can rent trailers. Haul the kids. Explore castles.”
My voice had already grown excited.
“Let me guess. You already found the tickets?”
“Frankfurt for two weeks. And we have those extra-legroom seats with nobody in front of us.”
I pulled up the flight details: an empty row in front, extra floor space, and a fold-down table.
“Let’s do it.”
~
We boarded the plane looking for Row 19.
According to Condor’s seating chart, they sat behind an empty row at the front of economy. We imagined enough floor space for the kids to play, maybe even stretch out and sleep. We’d seen a similar row on a flight to China, where a family had set up a bassinet beside the wall.
Row 19 looked exactly like every other row on the airplane.
Seats stood directly in front of us.
Our knees nearly touched them.
Dani flagged down a flight attendant.
“This is a newer aircraft. You’ll have to contact customer service.”
Before takeoff, she sent an email. The reply arrived almost immediately.
The seating chart was generic.
We looked at our perfectly ordinary seats and put our phones away.
There wasn’t much else to do.
Dani unpacked blankets, iPads, blueberries, cashews, and applesauce pouches. As the cabin lights dimmed, we gave the boys melatonin and hoped exhaustion would accomplish what our planning could not.
For a while it seemed to work.
Then Corbin woke.
Dani settled him.
Avery woke.
I walked him up and down the aisle.
Another family, kids curled up in the floor. The mom smiled at me.
I carried him.
Up.
Down.
Again.
Then I settled him back to his seat and closed my eyes and drifted back to sleep just long enough for the other child to wake.
The night settled into a rhythm measured in crying, whispered reassurances, and half-finished dreams. Each time a boy woke, he stayed awake a little longer, went back to sleep a little more fitfully.
An hour before landing, Avery finally collapsed against Dani’s chest.
He stayed asleep until the seatbelt sign illuminated.
The flight attendant stopped beside us.
“He has to be in his own seat.”
There wasn’t another choice.
I lifted him from her arms and buckled him in.
His eyes opened.
Then came the crying.
Frankfurt appeared beneath the wing.
It didn’t really feel like arriving.
~
We found the baggage turnstiles on the other side. Here, we recognized another family from our flight. They had two kids the same ages as ours, plus one on the way.
I shuttled our kids through the bathroom.
When I returned, they were talking about how their kids slept on the plane.
The woman looked at her kid.
“Oh yes, my daughter slept well. You curled up on the floor, didn’t you?”
“I’m so jealous. Neither of our kids slept at all.”
“Oh, well the trick is to let them play outside first. That is why we went to the park before this big plane ride, to make them sleep well.”
“That’s what we tried, too. We went to the San Francisco Zoo, but still they were awake.”
“Oh, the zoo. That’s great.”
“No, we–”
Dani sighed.
The woman looked down and smiled. Then she looked at Dani.
“Are you planning to have a third too?”
Corbin patted Dani’s tummy.
“A sister.”
Dani blushed.
I interviewed.
“No, she’s not… he must have gotten that from a show. ”
Then Dani and I looked at each other, neither of us answering right away.