Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 20, 1995 TAG: 9507200012
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
We have seriously considered passing out ear plugs to all the other passengers.
And complimentary Valium.
Our 16-month-old son, Max, is sitting next to me. Daddy is across the aisle.
We drugged him at the airport - Max, not Daddy - just like the doctor said: one teaspoon of Benadryl to make the sleep come easier, the screams come fewer.
He spit most of it out in a scene reminiscent of Linda Blair in ``The Exorcist,'' while the other passengers looked on, some of them beginning to twitch.
Now he is trying to win them over, throwing kisses - two-handed - to everyone on board. They are cowering, reading Cosmo essays on how to interpret your man's underwear and what your fingernail-polish color really says about you.
Now he is talking, spitting raspberries. Now he is sticking his thumb up his nose. But he is not screaming. He is not projectile vomiting.
We are, all of us, relieved.
For the past three weeks, he has been screaming ``AY-PWANE!!'' every time one flies above our house. Now he's on one, and he doesn't seem to realize it.
That's blind faith for you - not being scared to ride 3,000 feet in the air, not even realizing you're on a plane because, hey, your mommy and daddy are here, and so is an enormous supply of cheddar-cheese Goldfish, which Mommy dishes out on command like a human Pez dispenser.
It's the start of a weeklong exercise in blind faith that begins with the airplane rides, continues with a four-wheeling expedition through Colorado's Mount Zirkle Wilderness Area and culminates in a snowy hike that takes our son, after considerable argument between his parents, across the raging Elk River - ON A TREE LOG!! - while Max, snug in Daddy's backpack, sleeps through it all.
Do not try this at home. Please.
It's a wonderful thing, blind faith. I remember the moment when I lost it - sitting around a kitchen table full of adults, snug on my mom's lap. And then, in a split-second burst of laughter, my mom juts out her hand and accidentally grazes my arm with the lit end of her cigarette.
One-thousand apologies could not make up for it. She was, I remember realizing, no longer perfect.
Much of our life is spent trying to cope with the copious wrongs our parents committed against us. Remember when your dad, teaching you how to ride a bike, let go too soon - and you crashed into the neighbor's rose bush?
Remember your sixth-grade fascination with Catholicism when, convinced that your new friends the O'Malleys were the coolest family in the entire world, you begged your Methodist mom to let you attend St. Mary's School? Remember how surprised - and crushed - you were when she said no?
Remember just last week how your dad's unsolicited advice on car-buying thoroughly irritated you?
The eternal sins of parenthood. I'm sure I'll commit enough of them to fill an encyclopedia of parental no-no's. Call it ``What to Expect The First Fifty Years: Never-ending Guilt.''
But for now, I'm relishing the freedom of absolute perfection, when the worst thing I do, in Max's eyes, is put him down for a nap, or offer a banana when what he really wants is juice.
``JUUUU!! MO JUUUU!!'' he scolds me.
``More juice, PLEASE,'' I say.
``Mo juu peas,'' he says.
And all is right.
You can learn a lot from children if you give yourself a certain allowance of blind faith. Like rediscovering that it's usually OK to trust people, even the pilot of a machine that takes you miles into the air.
I surprised myself the other night when some friends had us over for dinner on their new back yard deck. We were headlong into one of our heady, philosophical discussions - I think the topic was Hugh Grant's hair - when I interrupted the conversation mid-sentence.
Max was home with his babysitter a mile away, but it didn't keep me from spontaneously pointing to the sky.
Before I even realized what I was doing, I shrieked at the jet passing above us:
``AY-PWANE!!''
Beth Macy is a Thursday columnist, feature writer, a native Midwesterner and the mother of a son who pronounces the words ``more'' (MO) and ``dog'' (DAWG) with a Southern accent. Her number is 981-3435, or (800) 346-1234, ext. 435.
by CNB