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Slice of Life: Hello from down below

Why is my picture upside down? Because I’m upside down and the problem with spending nearly 24 hours on an airplane is that it takes so dang long to get right side up again. By the time I get used to everything here, it’ll be time to come home again and do the whole thing in reverse. I’ll be getting up raring to go at 2 a.m., struggling not to drive on the left side of the road and avoiding quizzical looks when using expressions like “g’day,” “how ya going” and “see ya lighter.”

We’re Down Under once again in Townsville, North Queensland, Australia, this time to coddle and coo over our first grandchild! The really strange thing is that, depending on how you look at it, our daughter’s daughter was born on a day in the U.S. that didn’t exist for us here. Sound weird? This is how it worked out: We left at 7 p.m. EDT on July 27 and arrived at 11 a.m. (Australian time) on July 29, a mere hour and 45 minutes before the birth of our little bundle. So her birthday is either 7/28/11 or 29/07/11 (the reversed day and month format is yet another difference that takes some getting used to).

Besides the exquisite timing of arrivals, roughly equivalent to a swish shot from the last row of seats at Madison Square Garden, there was at least one other minor miracle. Honestly, how many times have you waited at the baggage carousel until it seems like every other passenger has retrieved their belongings and you’re wondering if yours have somehow wound up in, say, Dubai? Well, this time all three pieces of luggage were together and first on to the conveyer belt, I kid you not.

Of course, there were the usual downsides of 7,500 miles of air travel, like being crammed into a space about the size of a pre-school desk with no hope of stretching your legs for 13 hours unless you could somehow unbuckle your seatbelt and walk across the armrests of two or three other sleeping passengers and do a few laps in the aisles. My attempts at exercise were usually thwarted by a cart full of drinks or food or two or three dozen people trying to get to a bathroom.

On one of my forays, I conveniently found myself ensconced in a vacant premium-economy seat, with extra pillows, plenty of legroom and a pop-up table and TV. This lasted only until a kindly flight attendant reminded me that there was a special chamber in the rear of the aircraft designed to decompress and eject seat-changing violators out of the plane, where it was currently -60 degrees Fahrenheit at 32,000 feet, and even though I would be given a parachute, the chances of me landing on Hawaii were iffy at best.

Here in Australia it is now winter. If we were in New South Wales, Victoria or South Australia we might be wearing sweatshirts and wool hats but since we are nearer the equator in North Queensland, the sunburn capital of the world, the temps are regularly 80-85 Fahrenheit with brilliant sunshine every day. Here now locals can actually swim in Cleveland Bay or the Coral Sea without fear of being stung by any one of a number of lethal jellyfish that are usually present from November to May. The “red jellies” that we Islanders have come to abhor pale in comparison to the irukandji or box jellyfish that share a capability, along with giant spiders and “stinging trees,” to deliver serious doses of neurotoxins to the unsuspecting adventurer.

It’s a little disconcerting to walk along the “Strand,” a 2-kilometer park-walk along Cleveland Bay, and read stinger information warning signs that begin with “dial 000” and end with “continue resuscitative measures.” One lesson that the Shelter Island beachgoers could learn is to demand “vinegar stations” at spots along the sand to provide relief from stings. But the next thing you know there would be a movement to add olive oil, garlic and shallot stations to enable beachgoers to make a beach vinaigrette suitable for dressing fresh seaweed or grilled piping plovers.

But the rigors of world travel and the prospect of sudden death from resident snakes and crocodiles are no match for the fortitude of first-time grandparents, willing and able to go anywhere to use their “license to spoil” at every opportunity. The fact that our granddaughter will be half a world away most of the time for us will necessitate large salvos of spoilage when we are together, either here or there. I will try to resist the urge to buy her a mandolin, at least until she’s a year old.

As we help the new mom adjust, we’ll do what we can; we’ll walk the baby in the “pram,” change her “nappies,” put her down to sleep in her “cot” and do our best not to think of the long, long trip home that will come way too soon. For right now, though, we will revel in the moment. To borrow a title from A.A. Milne, “Now We Are Six” and we’re all here “to-gay-tha”!