Saying Goodbye, kind of
Last night my son was set to leave for his trip abroad. They told us to get to the airport 4 hours early. Every time we follow that crazy advice, we get through in 15 minutes and wait hours for our flight. So we decided to make it 3 hours. As we turned the corner on the offramp for the airport, a long winding snake of break lights greeted us. Fuck! As we all sat in silence, thinking the same thing, ‘we should have come earlier’, lightening flashes across the sky. Multiple times. Not a good sign.
Eventually we get up to the terminal and I drop them all off and say goodbye to my son. Everyone looks at me, ‘Are you crazy? You are coming in!’ Of course I was, I just wanted to make sure in case…
I park and find them inside, already checked in. He is ready to go through security, where we must say farewells. It hits my wife and I hard and the tears surprise our older son. He will know one day what it feels like to push the baby bird out of the nest to try his wings for the first time.
We go home and sit in front of a movie. As we are finally reach a relaxed state, the texts start coming in.
So at 1am I picked him up at the airport and we spent the rest of the night getting emails and texts from the airline about rebooking. We awoke in the morning to find that he had been automatically booked on a flight with terrible connections that he would most likely not make. This was not how we intended our baby to take his first flight alone.
After hours on hold with the airline, a visit to the airport and an expensive call to the language school, we managed to change his whole trip a week later.
Now I can relax and think about packing for my trip.
