My last grandparent died last month; I flew down to Dunedin for her funeral, and took Maire and Ada with me. I was, as you can imagine, rather apprehensive about Ada’s first flights in aeroplanes. Visions of being one of those poor souls with a wailing, indignant toddler and an aircraft full of unsympathetic glares danced before me.
My fears were not realised. Ada was delighted by the business of flying down aboard a 737, standing on the window seat and leaning against the portal to glimpse the world below. When we came back we were aboard a small prop plane that we wandered across the tarmac to board—it was promptly dubbed “tiny plane”, and an uneventful journey home resumed, with chirpy comments from my lap; “tiny plane propeller go round”, “tiny plane taking off”, and so on.
As we neared home we hit turbulence which caused, not panic, but delight. “Tiny plane jump” exclaimed the little voice; then came the point where at least some of my fellow travellers would, perhaps, have preferred a puking, screaming infant; as the plane began its descent into Wellington airport, I explained that the plane was coming down as we started to land.
For the remainer of the final approach, cries of “tiny plane jump” were mixed in with “tiny plane going down”, chanted like a gleeful mantra as we lurched toward what was a rougher-than-normal landing.
