Weekend Update

Last weekend I flew to San Francisco. I had been looking forward to the trip, especially the long flight. 6 hours of free time, without a baby to entertain? I haven't flown anywhere without Roan since he was born, and on every flight I'm always jealous of all the childless passengers. All they have to do is just sit there. They can read, watch a movie, stand up, use the restroom, scour every page of the SkyMall..., my god the options are limitless! I couldn't wait.

But just taking the train out to JFK, my departure didn't feel as glorious as it should have. In line for security there were babies everywhere. Seriously - the baby to adult ratio must have been something like 1 to 3. This was Thursday, the day after our big snowstorm, and no flights went out the day before, so the airport was packed. With babies. I stood in line and felt absolutely bereft. I had nothing to do. Everywhere people were juggling babies, feeding babies, trying to make babies happy, or at least stop screaming. I missed Roan so badly that I got that tingly feeling in my nose that comes right before I cry. And then I cried. At that point, I had been away from Roan for approximately 2 hours. This wasn't going so well.

I called Jay and made him send me photo after photo of Roan to my phone. On the plane, there were two babies right in front of me, and one baby directly across the aisle. When you fly with a baby, you're too busy to notice how incredibly lonely and depressed everyone else is. At least that's what I told myself as I oscillated between teary heartache and manic bouts of peek-a-boo. When a baby burns out on peek-a-boo before you do, you know you've gone too far.

Eventually I settled in and enjoyed the free time. It was amazing to have so much time to read. It felt good, but also a little bit wrong. I'm worried that I'll never be able to truly enjoy being by myself again.

San Francisco itself was better. I was there on business, but had enough to free time to walk around the city and hang out with friends. The nights were hard without my family, but every day it got easier to not have Roan around. There's this strange sense of idleness that I can't really describe, except to say that it feels somehow unnatural to have nothing to do moment to moment. It was as if he was taking a nap the entire weekend!

I flew home Monday and made up for my absence with a reading spree - we read One Fish Two Fish about eleven times in a row. I never thought I'd say it, but I missed that book. And never once this last week, even in the face of skipped naps and monstrously dirty diapers and oatmeal to the eye did I wish I was back on that plane.