Parenting by Seaplane

It’s another beautiful day at the Vancouver harbour, but I don’t have much time to appreciate it as we scurry down the hill to the seaplane terminal. My daughter Cypress’s little blue suitcase takes a beating as it’s dragged along behind her. Miraculously, we check in with time to spare, and as usual, everyone at Harbour Air kindly turns a blind eye as she loads up on the “free” mints and earplugs.

When two families share the child-rearing responsibilities between Vancouver and Saltspring Island, visits become more regimented than a crosstown drive. But that’s the trade-off we make for raising our kid in what the commercials call “the best place on earth.”

Cypress moved to the island with her dad and stepmom a few years back, when they were changing careers and I was going back to school. For me, it was a heartbreaking decision, but I understood that this was her chance to have a yard, a pet, and a place to ride her bike—while my version of the great outdoors was sticking my head out the apartment window. At first, seeing her on weekends meant an all-day ferry trip to pick her up and bring her back for some quality time in the city. (BC Ferries doesn’t allow kids under 12 to sail unaccompanied.) While the leisurely pace of ferry travel might appeal to vacationers, the merciless schedule and missed connections were messing with my blood pressure.

Now, I hesitate to credit my ex-husband with many bright ideas, but the day he called and informed me Cypress could fly right into downtown Vancouver, it might have been the smartest thing he’s ever suggested. Fast, convenient, safe; I’m in!

Any nervousness I had about putting Cypress on a flight by herself was soon allayed by the nice folks at Harbour Air, who knew exactly what they were doing, right down to her big Unaccompanied Minor neck tag, which she found “so totally embarrassing.”

As I watched the plane take off back to Saltspring that first Sunday afternoon, I felt that same familiar ache. Except that this time, once the plane shrank to a tiny dot in the sky, I was free to stroll up the street instead of sulking on the long trip home.

Years later, Cypress is now a seasoned teen floatplane commuter, and it was a happy day when she no longer had to wear that big U.M. neck tag. (Although I wonder if she shouldn’t still have it, considering I always said it stood for “uncontrollable monkey.”)

Fast, convenient, safe; I’m in!

Now she’s on and off the planes so often, I worry that she might be taking the spectacular scenery for granted. Luckily, her practised cool can still be blown by the sight—in a single flight, no less—of seals, a pod of orcas, and some “strange-coloured blobs in the water.”

It’s all good material for the stories she can tell one day, of flying between her two worlds, two families, and two homes.