The Worst Flight of Our Lives

I do not make such a statement lightly, without careful recollection of prior unpleasant forays into the Unfriendly Skies.  Like any traveler with mileage accrued in the stratosphere, I've had bad experiences.  Go to the craps table often enough, and sooner or later you'll come up snake eyes.  But this trumps all else, and the main reason is a fourteen pound bundle of Chinese joy.   We bid good riddance to the Jin Feng Hotel, arrived at the airport without issue, went through security with minimal problems (I got wanded due to the bulge of the money belt in my pants), and located gate 6 easily.  The Nanchang airport is nowhere near as large as Beijing's, with only eight gates and a couple of shops peddling cheap porcelain and snack foods.    Soon it became apparent from gate 6's screen that our China Southern flight CZ3626 was going to be delayed a bit due to the weather in Guangzhou.  That didn't surprise me much, since earlier in the day I'd been watching Chinese television with Clarisse and saw a meteorologist doing a report on the national weather.  The gigantic deep blue blob oozing over all of south China, utterly swallowing Guangzhou, was hard to miss.  There were plenty of other adoptive families at gate 6, not just from our hotel but a couple others in the city.  (Comparing notes, it seems that Jin Feng is about average, insofar as all of them should have been stripped of their self-anointed 5-star ratings.)  We did the obligatory oohing and aahing over each others' newly minted children, talked about what a crummy city Nanchang is, and how great it would be to go to a more modern (read: Western) city for the last half of our pilgrimage.  Those who'd done this before blessed the newbies with some of their acquired wisdom about Guangzhou, mostly concerning the fabled White Swan Hotel, the mecca of Chinese adoptive families for decades.    Kibitzing helped pass the time, but the eye that was trained on gate 6's screen, and the overhead master clock (in military time), warned me that this wasn't going to be a trivial holdup.  Hearing a steady stream of bilingual announcements expressing regret at delays on numerous flights due to the weather reinforced what my eye was telling me.  Ah, well, with all this flying to and within China, we were bound to get nailed eventually.  So we waited…and waited…and waited...and waited…nothing to do really, since it's such a small airport…nope, no news yet on our flight…hearing now that all flights out of Guangzhou are cancelled, that ain't good...wait, what was that overhead announcement about CZ3626, oh, nothing new…information desk doesn't know anything more, but are passing out complimentary dinners of chicken drumsticks and rice to all holding CZ3626 boarding passes for our inconvenience (hell will freeze over before a U.S. airport ever does that)…food's not all that bad, really…Big News— CZ3626 gate's changed to 5, that must be a good sign… CZ3626 has officially been rescheduled for a little after 9 pm, not too bad, a 3 hour delay if the new departure time is accurate…Clare's holding up like a trooper…and hey—looks like our plane's at the gate!  All the white mothers pick up their Chinese kids, the white fathers do their pack mule routines with the carryons, and everyone queues up in front of the long line of annoyed Chinese.  Turns out that Chinese airports don't do the thing with little kids getting in first, but by this time none of us round-eyes give a hoot about local customs.   The plane takes off without issue.  We'd wondered if Clare, this being her first flight ever, would have a problem with the air pressure changes in her ears.  But no, she seemed perfectly content while other kids were screaming.  Yep, that's our exceptional kid for you.  China Southern has a reputation for nice planes with lots of leg room, and that is indeed the case.  You have to pay for Economy Plus on United to equal the breathing space on a coach seat on China Southern.  Even though the flight was only supposed to be a little over an hour, they still served a meal.    Then, about a half hour or forty minutes into the trip, Clare exploded.  That was about the same time my ears started aching from the pressure, and she was holding her little ears, so it's a good bet that her ears were bothering her too.  More like killing her, really.  Apparently Chinese planes don't adjust internal cabin pressure as well as American planes, because I had the worst ear pain I've ever had on a flight.  It was like long needles were being shoved through my eardrums while I was underwater.  None of the usual tricks like chewing did a thing to stop it.  Flying through a lot of storms with rapid changes in air pressure had to be making things worse.  The overhead announcement said we'd be descending around 10:45, which was good, we could endure for another couple minutes.  Nothing we were doing, singing, playing, entertaining with puppets, did a thing to stop Clare's screaming.  She has one powerful set of lungs on her, producing a soul-searing wail that was equal parts fire truck siren and nails across a chalkboard.  A nauseating combination of pain and rage from the damnable injustice of her short life.   Soon we realized that, to our horror, we weren't descending after all, but were circling Guangzhou.  Too much lightning to safely land, we were told.  Oh Jesus, Zeus wasn't done with us, and neither was his thunder-hurling protégé, Clarisse.  Eventually other passengers started turning their heads, one at a time, to look at us, apparently wanting to see what we were obviously doing wrong.   Soon a few Chinese who could speak some English were offering well-intentioned but unsolicited advice, ranging from water to holding her differently to I-can't-remember-what, because I was mostly deaf by this time and utterly wrung out.  Naturally the other families' kids were settled down by now, some even sleeping.  Just to rub it in, I'm sure.   You know, I like to consider myself an above-average father.  Hey, I've gone through all this expense and hassle to adopt, haven't I?  I've sacrificed a lot—settling for an old TV instead of a snazzy flat screen, holding off on doing up a to-the-nines mancave in the basement, delaying putting in a pool for a couple more years.  Even during residency and fellowship I would moonlight as an autopsy technician and tissue banker just to salt some extra money away for various adoption fees, fingerprints, etc.  And just look at how well I've balanced my burgeoning career as a physician-scientist with raising Cedric.  We spend lots of time together, he's well provided for, and he clearly knows and loves me.  But one thing I cannot stand is incessant screaming.  As hard as I try to grit my teeth and endure, it slowly drives me mad.  I've had two such breaking moments with Cedric in the worst of the colicky days, when his howling just would not stop regardless of the creative ends to which I would go to placate him.  In those desperate moments, dark thoughts creep in at the edges, moving toward the center of my awareness.  Pity turns to weariness to annoyance to frustration to anger to full blown fury.  Murderous fury, the real thing.  Hawthorne was right—"The fiend in his own shape is less hideous, than when he rages in the breast of man."  I was holding Clare last night when, after a week of airports, marathon flights, filthy air, coughing up both lungs, run-down cities, shabby hotels, undrinkable water, outrageous fees, exchange rates, odd food, bizarre customs, loud noises, honking horns, insane drivers, thousands of eyeballs aimed at me, inscrutable signs, and incomprehensible babbling, Moment Number Three happened.  By God's mercy all three episodes have always happened when Christy is around.  Her sharp, frightened voice ordering me to hand Clarisse over to her blew the red mist away from my eyes and, stunned, I reflexively complied.  Nothing more need be said other than that, as we descended, Clare calmed down and cried no more the rest of the night.  We made it to our hotel by 1 am and were unconscious by 2.   Oh, by the way, the other families from another adoption agency we were staying with at the Jin Feng Hotel, including the New England contingent, had a different flight to Guangzhou Friday night.  Theirs was delayed a whopping 45 minutes and landed without issue.  Damn that Maineness…