Off to USA
Aadyaa’s first-ever international trip is memorable for almost all the wrong reasons! Thankfully she was too little to understand what was happening around her and she was the one that kept things seemingly sane!
Aadyaa and I set off on our first international trip together in September of 2014. She was 15 months old and unaware of where, what, why, and how! Though I have always loved travel, honestly, teleporting would be really nice to have some day...I love the destinations, but almost never the journey!
My mom had been unwell for a while, but my dad was really persistent about me and Aadyaa traveling since it had been planned for a long time. On the other side of the world, Hrishi was eagerly waiting to see us...this was the longest he had stayed away from his little princess...all of two months! :) None of us anticipated how that trip would eventually have to be cut short at the time, but with dad’s reassurance that things would only be better by the time we were back, Aadyaa and I left anyway.
I thought we were all set with a bassinet booked and the journey looked doable! I had flown for business earlier, so I wasn’t a nervous flyer either. From what I remembered, babies looked cozy and comfortable in those bassinets! But not mine...our flight was bumpy to say the least and as per the rules, babies cannot be in the bassinets during turbulence. I lost track of how many times I put her in the bassinet and then held her again, fastening the infant seat belt to mine each time. It was exhausting!
The crew was exceptionally supportive and also offered to hold Aadyaa during her bouts of crying...possibly due to ear pain during take off and then due to the constant interruptions in her sleep during the flight! But she wouldn’t allow anyone to hold her...I guess everything was way too much out of her comfort zone, for her to be comforted by anyone else. I ended up skipping two meals out of the three that were served during the flight in all this. She finally slept a little better for the last four hours of the flight, giving me some much needed rest. Not in the bassinet, of course!
After a seemingly unending immigration line up at the Chicago airport, and a fun moment when Aadyaa burst into peals of laughter saying ‘doddy, doddy’ when the sniffer dog was going around the immigration queue, we finally met Hrishi. The moment and the smiles on both their faces were PRICELESS! He had been raising silly doubts of whether she would forget him while he was away and they were all put to rest almost instantly by how she leapt into his arms!
Aadyaa adapted to the hotel room quickly, gauging the new environment, new things to pull and explore, and a new routine. She would keep us up through the night in India anyway, so she did quite well in the US time zone thankfully! We couldn’t do much in the short week that we were there, though we managed to squeeze in a trip to the Shedd aquarium on the weekend. I still remember that huge tank with hundreds of colorful fish swimming around in circles...if it is so mesmerizing for an adult, imagine what it can do to a child who is just stepping out into the world! Her first ever aquarium trip too! I remember us standing there for a good half an hour, trying to show her all the vibrant colors and different kinds of ‘fishies’. She loved the touch pools too, though she has never been the adventurous kind (at least not yet!).
We were on our way back to India in exactly eight days due to mom’s critical condition. After the ordeal on the flight to the USA and the unsuccessful attempts of shaking off thoughts of what lay ahead, I had no strength to put on a brave front and travel alone with Aadyaa. The three of us flew back together, but honestly, to this date, I don’t remember anything at all about that flight! It’s a big blur and I think I could drift off into oblivion, since Hrishi was ably handling Aadyaa.
I had almost decided never to travel long-distance with Aadyaa alone again until I was ready...but we eventually did few years down the line and she, all of six at the time, made it one of the best flights ever, almost as if to make up for this one!
But that’s a story for another day...