I wake up bright and early on Saturday the 16^th of September.  My 35^th birthday.  Today, I leave the beach with the girls to travel to Ireland.  The next major leg of the journey was underway.  I put on my big-girl attitude and thrust my chin in the air.  It was time and turning back wasn’t an option.

The drive from Hilton Head to Atlanta International Airport, on a good day with adults should be about six hours.  The same drive with two very needy infants turns into eight or nine hours.  Children are demanding humans.  The concept of just “wait until the next” stop which is 5 miles away is foreign to them, and an excellent reason to break down and have a tantrum while I’m sprinting at a casual 75 miles an hour.  Arranging synchronized pee is also near impossible with infants.  When you’re one parent with two babies, you are more than outnumbered – you’re doomed.  And, even though it is now mid-September, it’s over 90 degrees outside, and we’re in a big black car, which was yelling to the blazing sun, “Over Here!”.  The blasting air conditioning was in a losing battle the whole way.

While en route to Atlanta, I called my longtime friend Judy with whom I’d lost contact when I got married.  This woman had been a friend for many years prior to getting married.  However, we had lost contact when I married Will, since she disliked him vehemently.  Sadly, I came to find out that many of my friends felt this way about him.  Her reaction was so visceral, that she couldn’t stand to be around him.   But, since he was my husband, I had to choose him, and so we lost contact.  I decided that the present time was a great time to let her know about my change in circumstance.  This was my reckoning with Judy, admitting she had been right all along. Sitting in a rest stop in Georgia somewhere we had a long chat while the kids roamed about the car.   By reconnecting with Judy, I felt like somewhere out there I had a friend on my side.  And even though we’d lost contact, I knew she was still close to my heart – and I was in hers.

Typically, my nature is to blab to the world about my problems.  But, I’d found in the past week, that it was simply too painful and immediate to discuss.  I had more solace in not talking about it, yet.  Except for Judy, I felt compelled to tell her right away.  Funny how things hit you at different times.  She listened to my rant about what he had done and tried to stay objective about the situation.  She was sensitive but supportive.  It was freeing to finally connect and begin to open up.

We got to Atlanta airport around 4:30 in the afternoon after a nine hour drive.  My nerves were fried, but my day wasn’t even half over.  Driving up to the rental car return, I ignored the “enter here to return rental cars” sign and instead pulled up to the side where new rentals would pick up a car.  This caused a minor international incident with the rental car employees.  My clear disobedience of the signs was unacceptable, and they started screaming at me and flailing arms about to further give emphasis to their displeasure.  I quietly motioned to one of the car-checker-men to come over to my car and explained that if they wanted their car back, that he was going to have to come with me to the terminal so that I could unload my 2,364 bags at check in.  I had decided on my way there that it was not humanly possible for me to unload at the rental counter, get everything including the babies onto the bus and then shuttle back to the airport.  The car-checker-man looked at me with pity and frustration.   I told him that I frankly didn’t care what he did, that I was going to leave the car in front of Delta curb.  It was just easier to not fight me, but to get in with me and drive it back.  So, he did!

We pull up to the airline curb-side and with new-found experience, I quickly get the kids, bags, car seats and luggage out of the car. I’ve got the un-loading the car and jamming the suitcases onto a trolley routine fairly down pat at this point.  We slug our way into the Delta terminal.  Shuffling our way up to the counter, I hand the ticket agent our passports and tickets.  He asks the obligatory questions, checks the passports, deals with the luggage and car seats, taps away briskly and hands me our two tickets.  Our two tickets??

I look at him dumfounded and shaking as I question him: “What do you mean two tickets?  We should have three tickets!”  My panic is at level 10.  Am I going to have to buy a third ticket?

He calmly replies that my travel agent had only booked two seats and a bassinet.  I vaguely recall at this point the discussion with my travel agent about a bassinet.  I remember him asking if this was something that I wanted.  I remember clearly thinking this was a nice extra to our travel.  I had NO idea this was instead of a seat! In no way would I ever travel on an overseas flight with a one-year-old baby on my lap.  That’s a guarantee for no sleep for either of us. Now, I’m furious and desperate.

To make matters worse, he tells me that while my agent “booked” the bassinet for me, he failed to secure our seats in the row that has the bloody bassinets!  I’m now doubly screwed.  I don’t even have the option to use the bassinet, since I’m apparently not in the bulkhead row.  My mind is reeling and I’m at the point of hyperventilating.  After a 9 hour car trip in the blazing 90 degree Atlanta sun, I am now facing an overnight flight with two infants and not enough seats for all of us?

I pleadingly look at the agent and beg for him to sell me another ticket.  I go to pull out my Visa and he tells me not to bother, as the flight has sold out.   I look at him, shaking, crying, furious and desperate.

I say “I’ve been traveling for almost nine hours in the blazing sun today with my two very young children.  We are now going to get on an international flight.  Please, I beg you, please help me.  There must be something you can do.  Please.” Pause. Exasperated look thrown his way. “Please!”

Again, very calmly, he looks at me and says, “I’m sorry, Ma’am, but my hands are tied.  The flight is full.  Maybe they can help you at the gate.”

Even though I travel all the time and know that the gate can’t issue me a ticket, I still hold onto his thought as a possibility.  It’s how desperate I was feeling at the time.  I gathered up the kids, turned and with our three carry on bags and stroller, we slogged through the airport back towards our gate.  Along the way, I found a bank of phones.  Still fuming at the reality of how my travel agent completely screwed me, I paused to call him.  Of course, it is Saturday, and I knew he wouldn’t be working; I still had a point to make.

The bank of phones was in a corridor that was relatively unpopulated.   With children in tow, I chose a phone towards the middle where I can easily park them next to me.  However, it also highlights the fact that we’re surrounded by a whole lot of nothing.  I dialed his number; let it ring, reached his voice mail.  I can’t remember much of what I said at that point, other than I know I screamed.  I called him names; loads of expletives came streaming out of my mouth.  I know that people were passing behind me in this fairly unpopulated corridor where my cursing was heard for a long distance.  They had to have been staring at me, wondering who this insane person was with two kids at her feet.  After expelling myself of the horrible anger I was feeling, I slammed the receiver back into the cradle, and then slammed it again and again.  Now, I know people stopped to stare.  But, I was oblivious.  I was wrecked at the possibility of my flight, and the reality of my exhaustion.  I knelt down next to the girls and sobbed.  I sat in that long, sterile hallway with my kids in my arms and cried.

Eventually, we made our way back to the Delta counter.  Of course there were two lines waiting to speak to the gate agents.  I pick the shortest, hoping for the best.   After waiting in the jam-packed line for a seeming eternity, we finally got to the front. When it was our turn, I asked the gate agent if she would please step aside from the crowd so I could talk to her privately.  She was a plump African American woman with a huge bosom, a fine Georgian accent and matching attitude, and who was in no mood to negotiate.  She had a long line of people behind me, and knows that the slightest problem will set off the people in line.

But, I just looked at her and again started to cry.  Clearly tears were on my travel plans for the day.  At this point, I had little ability to stop them from flowing at the most minor provocation.

“I really need to talk to you aside for one minute.  I’ve got an unusual situation,” I begged, my voice shaking, edging to a sob.

“Honey, I do NOT have time for bull-shit like this,” she retorted, not buying my spiel.  “Crying is the oldest trick in the book.  What do you want?”

“OK, I’m begging.  I don’t know what else I need to do, maybe I should get on my knees?” I asked in a serious tone.  Ironically, on a normal day there would be no way I could pull off a comment like that.  But, this day, it seemed the most natural thing to ask.

She saw me physically shaking and holding my two very young children and finally she agreed to talk to me separately.

As we stepped aside, I told her about my situation.  I said that my husband had left me, and I had just been in a car for nine hours with my children.  I told her of my travel agent error, and I begged her for her help.  “I just need one seat where we can all sit together.  I can negotiate on the plane if I need to, if you can’t get them altogether.  I’m sure someone would understand.  All I need is one seat.  That’s all I need.”

She hesitated and sighed.

“Darlin, what’s your name?  Give me your tickets.”

She pulled our information up in the computer.  “I’ll see what I can do, but I’m no Reverend Falwell.  I’m not making any promises.  Girl, the flight is full, and you just better be prepared to deal with what you have.  Go sit in the gate area.  If I find anything, and that’s a big IF, I’ll let you know.”

She hands me back my tickets, and we shuffle to a remote corner of the gate where I can monitor and corral my kids as best as possible when you’re dealing with two toddlers that have been pent up all day in a car.

Even though this flight had unraveled at the seams, my fun wasn’t over yet.  The flight was to leave around 6:30pm.  I had no opportunity to feed the kids’ dinner up to this point.  What’s more, I couldn’t leave the gate area, as I was clinging to the hope that this lady could help me.  At 5:30pm, when boarding was to begin, they announced a delay of 30 minutes.  At 6:00pm, no updates were announced.  By 6:30, they issued a statement that they thought the plane might be ready by 7:30pm for boarding.  Ultimately, the plane boarded over two hours late, leaving my children starving and exhausted.  Heck, me too.

However, about 15 minutes prior to boarding, the gate agent called my name over the public address system.  After two plus hours of sitting there, my three carry on bags had been torn apart, spewed across the ground.  Snacks, books, toys, even clothes were thrown about.  Frantically, after hearing my name over the loudspeaker, I tried to shove all this stuff back into the bags as fast as I could so I could go talk to her.  I grasped at the various bits and pieces of our travelling life, while trying to soothe my exhausted, starving children.

I guess she saw me, because she gets back on the system and says “aww, Lord.  Forget it, I’ll come to you.”  I look around and see that the 500 other passengers are all curious as to whom she’s going to see.  Necks are craning to get a look at me as she saunters my way.

Upon reaching me, she sticks out her hand and asks me for my tickets.  I reach inside my bag and give them to her.  At this point, I still don’t know what she is going to do—or not do, and I’m frankly a little worried.  I’m thinking that maybe I’ve been kicked off the flight!

She then blankly looks at me and says, “Here are your THREE tickets, altogether in a row.  They are in the bulkhead row, so if you want to use the bassinet as well, you can.”  Then, she smiles.

I look at her and before I can even eek out a “thank you,” I’m hugging her and letting out a blubbering cry.  I held her and hugged her for an eternity.  That lovely southern lady saved my life.  If it had not been for her generosity and kindness, I can’t imagine what would have happened.  My second angel had just appeared.

Nicole Drapeau Gillen, Copyright 2016 All Rights Reserved