Time to board

My office neighbor had wished me a good trip three times before I almost snapped. "It's not a big deal, I'm just going to see my daughter, then I'm back Friday for the meetings. It's like you working from home for one day!" It wasn't even like working from home because I had a three hour meeting with one of my closest colleagues where we managed to write a workshop proposal and discuss a couple of papers that each of us had read recently. But yes, I did have a four hour commute 'home' to Stockholm Wednesday afternoon, just in time to pick up Zoe from school on the later side of 5pm and I did not work on the plane but instead took a nap because I was exhausted from a week-long cold on top of regular work. After a day in school for Zoe, me working 'from home', I picked her up at a regular hour and we headed to the airport. We ate a bit of dinner in the lounge while watching Dumbo together, Zoe crying her eyes out at always, during the scene where the mother is locked up but still manages to sing a lullaby for her cub, rocking the little elephant with her trunk. I comforted Zoe, well-knowing that this scene perfectly illustrates our life and that this is why we watch it and this is why we cry. We arrived at my parents' house past 9pm where my mother was waiting with tea and cookies, but Zoe fell asleep on the couch.

Zoe eating chocolate strawberries in Copenhagen

It is not the actual flying, I explained to my friend, it is the shifting of context that I have to do constantly. I wake up and for a couple of seconds I have to try to figure out where I am. I have to remind myself where I have my things. I have double of everything (well triple if counting my parents' place) but there are just some tings you can't have double of. And shifting context in terms of language and places, makes it hard shifting context when it comes to work. My type of work is already very diverse, I spend one hour preparing teaching, then another writing on a paper and a third in a meeting with colleagues in relation to a new research collaboration, not to mention the hour working on travel claims and planning. This is standard work structure for my kind of position, nothing new there, nothing special about that. But combined with me shifting between three different apartments, two lounges, airplanes and my office actually being the place I spend the most time in total, it is difficult to focus. To retain some sort of structure I go to the same coffee shop in Stockholm every morning after dropping Zoe off, sitting at the very same table, drinking the same type of coffee. It helps a bit. But then I get a notification from my SAS app telling me that I can now check in and I realize that in 24 hours it is time to board again.

Frequent flyer

Last time I checked into the lounge they cut my gold card in two. Not because I am not gold anymore but because it had expired. Since I now have a combined credit/frequent flyer card I'm supposed to use that. Except I don't like running around with a credit card in my hand when I rush to a plane and I often let Zoe hold the 'tickets' too, which in my case is the card, in her case mostly a paper boarding pass (why they can't also put her boarding pass on her card is beyond me but it's probably because she flies on a child ticket). I grumpily went to the website and ordered new cards for both Zoe and me. When I got them it turned out she has been downgraded from silver to basic, mainly because I tend to buy her tickets on my miles so she doesn't earn nearly as many as me. But it did get me thinking of her amazing skills as a frequent flyer. Here is a list of her coolness when it comes to flying:

1. Zoe has security down. She walks up to the conveyer belt as a pro, takes off her jacket without being asked and guides the process of what goes in which box. She always insists on taking off her shoes and in the US I have to explain this to the officers who always point out that she doesn't have to because she is a child. These days she goes through the metal detector first but when she was little I would go through first before turning around and call her to come through. When she is through she asks me if I can ask the officer to 'touch' her. In Europe they always do it, very smilingly because she is so serious about it. In Stockholm where they have the shoe tester, she asks to use that too. So much for not letting strangers touch your child, but Zoe thinks this is an integrated part of security control. Oh and last time, I walked away and she was the one reminding me that we forgot our carryon suitcase.

2. Zoe enters the plane with a nice 'hello' to the flight attendants and asks how far down we are going. Then she counts the rows to the number I tell her, for example row 12, and hops in by the window. She buckles up herself and her doll and tells the doll not to be scared even though it is going to say 'boom' when we take off. She picks out the menu and tells me what we should get (most of the time she orders a small bag of chips). Recently she has realized that we fly through the clouds and is very fascinated by it. She wonders how soft they are and why the sun is always above them.

3. She still likes to take naps during the flight and fall asleep immediately with her head on my lap. But mostly she watches a video or play a game on her iPad.

4. Upon exit she says goodbye to the flight attendants again.

5. Zoe is now able to exit the airport by herself! A couple of weeks ago I had to drop her off with my mom in Copenhagen and continue to another city myself, but I only had 40 minutes between planes and didn't have time to go out and back through security again. We have been in this situation before: once I bought my mom a cheap ticket so she could go through and pick Zoe up airside, another time a friend of a friend who worked in the airport helped her out. This time I asked her if she thought she was big enough to go through herself and she proudly agreed. Luckily I was changing to domestic and it turned out that the exit at that part of the airport is much shorter than the international main exit. I had told her that if she didn't want to, of course I would exit with her and simply just risk missing my plane (Zoe's sense of safety is after all more important to me than any business meeting or lecture I might be doing) but when we got to the doors, she could see her grandmother on the other side through many layers of glass. She lightened up and ran off, forgetting to hug me goodbye.

All in all, she behaves like the frequent flyer she is. 4 years old and everything. 

Where is the bin?

For the first time today I overheard a conversation about Zoe's language. Or should I say mix of languages. We were about to board and Zoe went up to the boarding desk herself with her boarding pass and passport (England is outside Schengen) while I packed up our things. I then asked her if she wanted to have the last sip from her juice box and she walked back to me to grab it. "No, we need to throw it in the bin", she said in her adorable british/scottish accent (even though most of our conversation had been in Danish). I looked around but there was no trash can in the waiting area, so we walked up to the boarding desk that was manned by two women. "Mor, ask if they have a bin, if they can put it in the bin", Zoe said now again in clear English. I asked, but in English, because well, that was apparently the language of the moment. The woman bent down towards Zoe and offered in Swedish to take the empty juice box. Zoe gave it to her and happily followed me out to the air bridge. Before the sliding doors closed behind us, I heard the two women talk: "They were Danish", one said puzzled (note that they had just seen our passports), "But that was so cute, *the bin*", the other said, imitating Zoe's accent. "I wonder why she spoke English", the first one said referring back to Zoe.

I wonder sometimes too, she mixes it a lot, but Zoe has become more conscious about her many languages: Later on the plane she said "Zoe speak danish with Mor" (in danish), and when I asked what language she wanted her story in, she thought about it for a while and answered "Dansk". And unfortunately she often says "Zoe not understand Swedish" with a sad expression. She will be attending 100% Swedish daycare in July for 4 weeks so that will very likely change. We will see.