Okay, it wasn’t really a play date; it was just my son and me. And it wasn’t weird, like that time a few years ago when one of my friends wanted me to go out to the airport for a “lactation sit-in” with her, because some mother hadn’t been allowed to board a flight because she was nursing her two-year-old in public without a hooter-hider.
And, well, no, I’d never thought of taking my five-year-old son to the Burlington Airport (Vermont) as an outing. But one evening last summer I read an article in Parenting magazine about places to take your child besides the park, museum, etc. The next morning, after my husband left for work, I packed a variety of snacks and toys, and we got out our bikes. We only live about a mile from the airport, so taking the car just seemed a little silly. Our son loves to bike with those training wheels anyway.
The Burlington Airport is small. No, it’s tiny. And tiny, for once, is nice. You can get to the airport 20 minutes before a flight and make it. Not that I recommend that, but I’ve done it. The airline workers are friendly, or at least much friendlier than those I’ve come across in JFK or Logan, where the airline people all greet you with the élan of a teenage fast food worker; at least in Burlington Airport you feel like the workers are all thirty-something fast food managers—a little old for the job and perhaps not that intelligent, but industrious and in charge.
When we got to the airport, I’d forgotten that they had an exhibit commemorating the 400-year discovery of Lake Champlain. I know “discovery” isn’t the right word, but I don’t know what else to call it. Lake Champlain, I guess, isn’t the right word either—Champlain is just the guy who they named the lake after. Anyway, the exhibit is tastefully done—lots of bears and canoes, that sort of thing—even if the only thing my son got a charge out of was the Lake Champlain chocolate truffle I bought him in the gift shop.
We took the escalator to the second floor, and I noticed the sign for “Observation Deck.” I’d never been. Nobody was inside and my son immediately ran to the window. “No planes?” he said. I told him to be patient, and soon enough we saw a fighter jet land! (The Air National Guard is right there at the airport.) While my son tried to decipher what the air traffic controllers were saying over the intercom—their voices are pumped in through speakers in the small room, which was in fact a control tower long ago—I read all the captions underneath photos on the walls. Odd trivia: Burlington Airport was for two days in the early 1940s the world’s busiest airport!
There was no one else in the room, so I let my son stand on the leather (leather!) seats and play dinosaurs. I’d brought a book along, but had no interest for it. It was enough just to look out at the mountains and listen to the dinosaurs fight each other.
Even though I had snacks in my bag, we had lunch in the restaurant One Flight Up and watched a few planes land. It wasn’t expensive, really, since we both had French fries and ice water.
Lastly, we went back downstairs and looked at magazines in the bookshop. My son was crinkling up pages, accidentally I’m sure, when the clerk said: “Son, are you gonna buy that?” I stepped out from behind something and told her he was with me. She said, “Are you gonna buy that then?” I said, “We’re locales, okay, we’re just here to have some fun.” She just gave me a “whatever” look and let us be. So, okay, some of the airport people were teenage fast food workers disguised as retires wearing “Hudson News” nametags.
All in all, I have to say I was surprised by how much my son enjoyed the outing. Roundtrip, the whole thing lasted about three hours, and that night when his father asked him what he’d done that day, he actually had something to say: “Mom took me to the airport and we ate chocolates and French fries and my Apatosaurus ate ketchup!” When my husband looked at me with a raised eyebrow, I said: “In case you don’t remember, Apatosauruses are herbivores.”