If the Shoe Fits, Wear It to the Airport

By Jennifer Angelo

When Mother travels by plane, I am her airport chauffeur. I get her to the airport, pick her up from the airport, and take her home. Mother is returning home in an hour from a visit with her sister, Jean.

On this airport run, as usual, my 4-year-old daughter, Claire, comes along. I call to her using a sing-song warbling voice moms use when coercing non-compliant children into obedience.

“Time to goooo. Put on your socks and shoooes.”

I find her socks, one in between the seat cushion and springs of the couch, the other in the dog’s food dish. At least it isn’t in the water dish. Finding two socks that are nearly the same color, I decide that an exact match is not really important. I find her shoes, one beside the bathtub, the other on her unmade bed, rolled up in the yellow comforter with the spring flower print and blue piping. I locate my daughter on the couch, slouching, eyes glued to the television set. Barney the purple dinosaur sings “I love you, you love me,” in that sweet-as-orange-slices-candy voice.

As I begin putting Claire’s socks on her feet, she finally notices me. “Nooo!” she wails, “I want my birthday shoes!” The birthday shoes are a pair of $3.98 purple on the bottom, pink on top, plastic, slip-on high heel shoes from Toy ‘R’ Us. These are the cheap ones. The kind that start falling apart after being worn for 15 minutes; the sequins bounce off and roll all over the floor; the glittery felt heart glued on the toe pops off the first time the little owner crosses her ankles.

“Fine,” I say, “wear the shoes.”

How hard can it be to walk from short-term airport parking to Baggage Claim, pick up Grandma, and walk back? I refrain from trying to persuade her to wear the Rug-Rat athletic shoes with the resemblance of Angelica’s face embroidered on the side. She wears the birthday shoes.

We park in short-term parking and walk four feet before Claire complains that the shoes hurt her toes and that she can’t walk any farther. I pick her up. I never reached five feet in height and my daughter is an average 4-year-old girl, weighing 34 pounds. After carrying Claire for less than the width of three parked cars, my arms feel like overcooked spaghetti. But I am the mom, so I keep carrying this heavy, but stylishly shoed, little load.

At Baggage Claim we see no bags gliding around on the carousel, no people looking for bags, no movement and no Mother. Nothing. I begin to get a bad feeling. Searching the always very helpful monitors I see that a TWA flight is arriving today, from Mother’s departure point, but the monitor never bothers mentioning exactly WHEN the flight might arrive. I can no longer carry Claire. We get on the escalator that will take us to the ticket counter.

On the escalator, we are for the moment stationary. My daughter decides that this is a good time to start clicking her heels like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. One shoe falls off. I snatch it before it tumbles down the escalator steps. Off the escalator, Claire walks on her own. The click-clack, click-clack staccato coming from the heels makes the crowd at Lost Luggage turn around to see if the airport has been invaded by a band of snare drum players.

A ticket agent finds Mother’s flight. Pointing to her screen she says, “Yup, according to the flight information your mother got on the plane. But the plane is not due here for another two hours.” Mother had given me the time she would GET ON the plane instead of the time she would GET OFF.

What to do? What to do? Not enough time to go home and too much time to keep a 4-year-old entertained in a place unfriendly to those who insist on wearing toy, dress-up shoes. I look for the closest McDonald’s with a play area.

Leaving the airport, I carry Claire with the shoes falling off her feet every few yards. “Pick up your feet!” I yell. “I cant. My feet are tooo tired,” she whines, duplicating the same warble in her voice I had used when we were preparing to go.

At McDonald’s, Claire plays in the plastic balls. Just outside the ball area is a sign clearly stating that children playing in the balls should take their shoes off and leave their socks on. We ignore the sign. The time passes and we return to the airport.

Once again we go to Baggage Claim. Once again people stare at us, looking for the source of the snare drum band. This time we see people gathering and bags rolling down the conveyor belt. I spot Mother among the passengers looking for their bags—only three hours and forty-five minutes after this latest airport run had begun.

As we wait for her last bag to roll down the carousel, I catch her looking at Claire’s shoes. I hold my breath. Her expression gives away her thoughts, “What kind of mother would let her child go to the airport in dress-up, toy high-heel shoes?”

As I drag the bags, we walk toward the car. I coax Claire to continue walking on her own while Mother tells me about the kind of peanuts she had on the plane and that the flight attendant lives in the same apartment complex where she used to live. In Mother’s driveway I pull her bags out of the trunk.

“You know,” she says, “you really ought to take Claire shoe shopping. She could use a pair of good sneakers.”

Focus Magazine, Tribune-Review, Sunday, Feb 4, 2001 (page 3).

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