Skip to main content

Bitchy In the Sky


I have always viewed plane rides as a time to rejuvenate. A time to savor a good book, magazines, movies, music, a nice drink… In spite of all the post 9-11 hassles of air travel, I melt at the captains instructions: “relax, sit back, and enjoy the flight.” And even with our new baby, we have enjoyed flying since she was two and a half months.

Last weekend we took a short holiday to Vancouver. As usual we had picked our flight to coincide with our six month olds’ “Happy Time”. And happy she was, as she sat on her daddy’s lap cooing and cuddling.

Proud and blissful, about to enjoy my airport bought sandwich, I took notice of a passenger ahead of us that kept turning around and shooting glances at my child. I awaited her next glance to return a lovely smile, as to acknowledge her admiration of our perfect little traveler. But after the next “agoo” from BabyUrban, I caught a snake eye directed towards my baby's head from 29 A. I kept watch, and for the next hour and a half, our little darling got over two dozen dirty looks, head shakes, and huffs from Bitchy in the Sky!

My husband, the eternal Zen master, didn’t seem to take note. And even if he did, he would rarely become an accomplis in my need to react. So, when daddy and baby decided to stretch their legs I snapped some photos and vowed to blog it off my chest.

A word to the wise: Be kind! You never know who is watching you. Also, parents do anything for their children to behave gracefully in public. So be generous if you feel momentarily annoyed (especially if you seem to have an unusually low threshold for baby talk), and you’ll be rewarded with good Karma.

p.s. In the interest of good Karma, I will not post a recognizable photo.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FORTY THREE YEARS, SEVEN MONTHS AND FORTY DAYS

My life and the life of every Iranian I know,  is bookended by the Iranian Revolution of 1979. It doesn't matter that I was barely old enough to remember this historic event or that I spent the decades that followed it, far far away from Iran, the Revolution of 1979 is a heavy, tacky, cruel bookend that defines who we used to be, who we are and the recurring nightmares and dreams we’ve had for 43 years.  I can pinpoint with certainty the exact month after which a general feeling of displacement settled like sticky dust all over me, my family, my classroom, my teachers, our closest friends, our home, our city… In the years and decades that followed, I never experienced another event that brought such a magnitude of change to the nucleus of life.   Not in Iran, and definitely not after a whole life lived outside of Iran.  Perhaps only recently, the experience of the Trump years and the Covid-19 pandemic, the significant fear, change and frustration that both events brought to our col
Post a Comment
Read more

On Donald Trump, Crunchy Bananas and our Children... A "How To" on keeping up Spirits and Sanity

The other morning at breakfast, my four year old looked, yet again somberly, at the breakfast before her.  Despite having enthusiastically selected a hodgepodge of liberally salted hard boiled egg whites on the side of toasted hamburger buns, strawberries and vanilla yogurt and a cup of milk, she still could not bring herself to enjoy her breakfast.  Her face was wrinkled, as was mine with exasperation from yet another failed attempt at assembling a palatable breakfast for my picky eater. This one, she is quite the philosopher.  And before I could ask her why she wasn't eating, she said: "Two Things!"  Holding up two tiny fingers.  "The smells of these foods I picked, don't go with each other! And I wish Donald Trump would magically become Hillary Clinton, and the word (world) would be GREAT again".     Despite our best efforts to protect our children from the anxiety of these times, they are alert and picking up on the mood (and the lingo) in the wor
1 comment
Read more

Safa

I have always loved words.  The way some people love shiny new objects.  As soon as I heard a new word, a word that captured my imagination, my energy, my hundreds of unnamed inner thoughts and feelings, I would latch on to it with fearceness, joy and curiosity.  I have also always been intrigued by how regular old words can be used in an unexpected context and evoke bursts of unexpected feelings in the listener, such as laughter, anticipation or tears.  I would search for those words coming out of the mouths of everyone around me, and mentally catalog them like a dutiful librarian, and await the opportunity to say the words with my own mouth out loud to an audience, or better yet use it in an essay where the teacher could grade it, get a kick out of it, or read it to the whole class.      As a child I always loved the Persian word Safa .   For one thing the word sounds so simple, yet sophisticated and beautiful, and for another, each of my memories of hearing this word is stored in th
2 comments
Read more