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When my husband and I first moved from New York to Paris eight years ago, we were thinking about kids — specifically, we wanted to be closer to his family to start our own.
I didn't comprehend what it meant to be an only child living so far away from my parents. New York is already a seven-hour flight from Tucson, where my parents live, I rationalized. What's eight hours more in the grand scheme of things? It helped when my parents floated the idea of buying a small vacation home in southern France.
Now that I have two small children and aging parents, the consequences have crystallized. It's too late to turn back now. I wonder what that means for our future.
The first time we went to visit them, it was a disaster. My dog, Mochi, peed at the feet of airport security. For the previous eight hours, she'd quietly submitted to being stuffed under the seat in her carrier for our Paris-Atlanta flight. Our first child, Eloise, was at a "golden age" for travel. At 6 months old, she blissfully slept in an airline-provided bassinet hooked to the bulkhead.
Then we arrived at customs. The line wound around itself like a rattlesnake in a defensive coil. I pushed Eloise's stroller from one customs agent to the next, pleading to jump the line so we could make our tight layover to Tucson. They looked unimpressed.
We'd been waiting an hour and a half when Eloise started screaming. I picked her up and bounced. She screeched. People stared. Five minutes passed. A grandmotherly agent finally took pity and escorted us to the front of the line. That was when Mochi peed on the airport floor (and, as we sprinted to the gate, pooped). We missed our connecting flight.
Thanks to COVID, 18 months passed between that first Tucson trip and our next visit. Until then, Skype mercifully allowed my parents to see their granddaughter every week. But you can't hold and kiss, tickle, and chase over broadband.
After Thibault arrived, I couldn't justify a 24-hour journey with two tiny humans. I always pitied the parent following a toddler up and down the airplane aisle, rocking a screaming baby. I had no appreciation of what it was like to be that parent until I became one myself.
We waited until the kids were 18 months and 4 years old to venture back to my parents' house. The flight, combined with a nine-hour time change, was brutal. My husband and I — usually relatively collaborative — fought nonstop. In over a year, we haven't been back.
One upside of being an only child is that my parents have more bandwidth to visit us in Paris, a trip my mom makes every few months.
It only took a couple of visits before she shelved the idea of a vacation home here. We were all deluding ourselves.
As time passes, I reproach my only child's egotism. My parents are getting older, and each flight is harder. I know there will come a point when they aren't able to travel to us when they need someone to care for them. I'm the only person for that role.
How could I have reasonably considered living abroad as an only child? How could I have not foreseen the unfairness of dragging children on daylong flights? How could I have allowed myself to fall in love with a man who told me he planned to return to France on our very first date?
After that fateful missed flight, it took three frantic Uber rides before we found an Atlanta motel with an available room. Without a bassinet, Eloise slept on the floor; we passed out, fully clothed, on top of the bed. The following day, we made it to Tucson, bleary but relieved. Eloise met my childhood friends, swam in my parents' pool, and glimpsed her first saguaro. My parents spoiled their only granddaughter rotten.
We all make choices, but we're often bad at appreciating where those choices will lead until we're well past that fork in the road. My parents chose to have one child because I was "all they wanted" (I'm still not convinced that's a compliment). I fell in love with a Frenchman and moved 5,000 miles away. We'll have to make the best of it.
One upside of aging is that kids get older, too. We have an iPad and "PAW Patrol." Transatlantic flights will never be easy, but they will get easier.
My parents recently bought a new home with an upgraded view down the street from their old place. A huge selling point, for them and us, is it came with a waterslide. I can't wait to share it with my kids when we return this spring.
