Turbulence!

I glanced down at my two young sons seated on each side of me, reveling in their excitement. We were on our first family vacation, flying across the country to visit my husband’s family in Newfoundland. Our first stop had been in Toronto where we had spent the evening with his best friend from the past and his family. A wild trip to the airport during rush hour traffic had us hoping we wouldn’t miss the plane, but we had made it, with minutes to spare. And now we were flying again, this time from Toronto to Ottawa. Our itinerary was definitely providing us with a tour of our whole country.

Across the aisle, my husband sat between my two older sons, ages six and seven. As I looked around at the other passengers. I realized that we were the only family on the plane. It appeared that we were on a business flight to our nation’s capital. Everyone was impeccably dressed in business attire, a major contrast to our casual traveling clothes. As I looked around at the other passengers I imagined that they would be going directly from the airport to business meetings with important government officials. I wondered how many important decisions would they be making that would affect my family in the future.

The crew was about to serve breakfast when the plane suddenly dropped. Wide eyed my sons asked me what was happening. I told them it was nothing to worry about. It was called turbulence. It happened when there were changes in the pressure and flow of air currents we were flying through. I told them to look out the window at the clouds below the plane. Could they see spaces in the clouds that might cause the turbulence? I assured them that the pilots knew what they were doing to keep us safe.

Meanwhile, the breakfast carts were quickly stowed back in the galley. An announcement was made that we must all fasten our seatbelts. Breakfast would not be served until we had made it through this patch of turbulence.

We bounced along for awhile with my boys hanging on tightly to my arms, as if I could protect them. Finally the erratic movements calmed down. The crew pulled out the breakfast carts again. This time they announced that they would serve everything except coffee or tea, just case the plane encountered more turbulence. We were all given a bowl of cereal, a container of milk and an orange. I poured the milk on the cereal for the three of us. Across the aisle, my husband did the same.

We had just started to eat when the plane dropped again. 6 bowls of cereal and milk went flying up in the air, flipped over and landed on the passengers seated in front of us. There was no way we were able to react fast enough to catch one of them, much less all three. As I looked at those poor people, covered in milk and cereal, I wondered how they were going to manage to clean themselves up enough to do whatever it was they were planning to do in Ottawa.

The crew quickly retrieved all of the breakfast items. My husband and I both apologized profusely to the people in front of us. They didn’t overreact, but I had a feeling they were all upset that children had been allowed on this business flight. We made it to Ottawa and on to Newfoundland without any further excitement. However, I haven’t been able to experience turbulence on a plane in the years since, without seeing those bowls of cereal go flying up in the air.