Susie returns to long-distance travelling

We’re going places again. There’s a ‘rush’ to airports, which are overstretched and understaffed but also happy to be running nearer full capacity. Airline staff are seemingly beaming at the long bag-drop queues. And the looks on parents’ faces are withered before holidays even begin, as they drag along their offspring, tethered to Trunkis and juice cartons. Now that I’m hemmed in by school holiday dates, I steeled myself for the first long-haul holiday with my daughter since 2019, to Los Angeles. She became fixated by the palm trees and blue skies in shrill kiddy-influencer YouTube videos. Never mind that there are palm trees and blue skies in many other places. LA was Nico’s La La Land and I had friends to reunite with whom I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic.

I’d been out of practice doing long-haul with child in tow so I attempted to play the part of ‘that mum’ (basically an evolution of ‘that girl’ whose green juice-powered yoga-gear lifestyle has been memed to death). I prepped the healthy snacks in Zip-lock bags. I packed the volume control headphones that cushion her ears and enhance the umpteenth watching of Moana. I succumbed and brought yet another ‘useful’ gizmo — a mini suitcase that also doubles as a scooter — just to add to the growing child vehicle pile-up outside my house. No regrets. She sailed through a painful immigration line without me resorting to hoiking her on my hips, an important consideration when travelling alone without bicep back-up.

Selfishly, I feared she would obliterate my pre-child carefree days of hanging out in LA, bouncing from one taco joint to another. Turns out my preconceived imaginings of a nightmarish trip were unfounded. To my over-prepping and fretting, she side-eyed me with a ‘Whatever…’ (picked up from the aforementioned YouTube watching).