So, yeah. It's been a heckuva long time hasn't it?
I had a really good experience at the airport last week and I figured that was a good reason to get The Creeping Kid back to creeping. It helps that Kiernan has not only given me permission to keep writing about him and what's going on with him, which was a very important consideration to me, but has explicitly encouraged me to start up the blog again. Well...okay then.
Anyway, as I was saying, I had a really good experience at the airport last week. At the airport? You ask? I know...right?
It was a tough night for me, as I was taking my son there for his first flight alone. Of course this made it a tough night for both of us. He's eleven now--at least until the end of this month--and it was a super short flight, so it shouldn't have been that big of a deal, but I was nervous about it, and he was scared. I had to walk the line between being honest about also being scared, and being clear that I thought everything was going to be okay in order for him to feel calm and safe.
Lucky for the both of us, he was flying out of the smaller airport in our area, where the folks are pretty cool, and the people we dealt with from the airline--Southwest--were freaking awesome.
In particular the woman who was the Ground Operations representative at the gate. Her name was Valerie, and she was so good to us.
When it was time to board, she took Kiernan onto the plane first.
At first I was nervous about her. If you look at the picture above, Kiernan has a frog on his head. It's okay to stare; he knows it's there. That is his frog, Sapphire. The name is pronounced, "Saff-eye-yeah!" in case you were wondering. And Sapphire was the one animal he wanted to take on the plane with him. I mean, given that he couldn't take his dog Honey on the plane with him.
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| Photo Credit: Kiernan Murawski |
Kiernan was concerned about the flight, as I said above, and to relieve some of that tension we started playing a game of catch, using Sapphire, who is kind of weighted like a beanbag. Imagine a big hacky sack and you'll get the idea. So we were there in the entry/exit area of the gate and tossing this frog back and forth to each other and this woman who works Ground Ops comes up to us and says that folks are about to be coming off the plane, so...
She was nice about it and all. I was just worried we were in trouble.
We weren't. People had been super cool with us so far. At the ticket counter when I showed my form to escort my Unaccompanied Minor. At security. At the check-in desk at the gate. All along everyone telling us he'd be first on the plane, and I'd need to stay there until the plane took off. All along everyone being super helpful and nice.
After the arriving plane's passengers all went through, Valerie returned to us and let us know that she'd be taking Kiernan on first, before any pre-boarding passengers. We stood waiting patiently until she came back to get him and I gave him a big hug and tried to be as strong as possible.
As he went through the door--I should note that this is the airport in Burbank, and you walk out the door across the tarmac to the plane and climb those rolling stairs to board; you don't go down those vacuum-cleaner tubes like at bigger airports--I started to tear up, as is my wont. The dude waiting to get on the plane in front of me tried to reassure me. "I've put my kids on a few flights. This is a short one. He'll be fine. I know it's hard putting your eleven-year old on a plane alone, but he'll be fine."
"Thank you," I said. I considered making small talk with him by way of thanks, but I realized I could not talk at that moment and moved away to find a place to sit down.
Valerie came back from walking Kiernan onto the plane and told me he was fine. She'd seated him on the side of the plane that would enable him to see me when I went to the windows. The boarding area was still packed with passengers--it was obviously going to be a full flight--so I waited for them to clear before I went to look out. Valerie returned a few minutes later and handed me some tissues, saying, "I think you had a runny nose, right?"
It was a sweet gesture.
I watched the plane through the window until the boarding area emptied, holding my hands up to block out the inside lights that were so bright and making it almost impossible to see out of the tinted glass. As I tried to see where he was on the plane, I heard, "Dad? Hey Dad!"
Confused, I looked up in the now empty boarding area. It was Valerie calling me over to the open door through which the passengers had just exited.
"Come over here and watch from here. When the plane pulls out you'll be able to see him."
She propped the door open and disappeared for a moment, reappearing with a cup of coffee for herself. "You'll be able to see him from here," she said. "If they pull out that way." She indicated the direction. "They don't always, but they usually do. And he's on this side of the plane."
We stood at the open door and she talked about her kids and asked me questions about mine. She told me that when the pilot waved, that meant everything was "Golden" and they were ready to go. The pilot waved and she waved back. The plane pulled out--or, rather, that tow-truck thing pushed it out--and she told me my boy was three seats back on the side of the plane facing us since the plane had turned out in the right direction. And there he was, waving at me. We waved back from the gate.
The plane taxied out of view. I still needed to wait until it actually took off though, because he's an unaccompanied minor and you have to wait until the plane is in the air. Every person you go through at the airport tells you that, as if leaving before the plane that's carrying your kid away for the first time could even remotely be an option. Valerie talked to the other Ground Op dude, who was working at the monitor next to the door, and asked which gate she had to report to next.
"Gate 4," he replied.
She looked at her watch. "I've got time to take him out front." The board op dude nodded.
"You need to stay until the plane takes off," she said again, as we walked. "Technically we should wait inside for that. But I'm going to take you to the best view of that."
She walked me out to the front of the airport and pointed to an area where we could sit down and wait and talk. It wasn't a bench or anything. It was just one of those planters in front of the airport, on the sidewalk where folks can pull up to drop people off for departing flights. We sat down and she took off her walky-talky, which she said would let her know if the plane wasn't leaving, and explained yet again that I needed to stay until the plane took off because sometimes people freak out on the runway, or whatever, and the plane has to return to the gate. I assured her I was in no hurry to leave and she smiled.
We talked about kids and how fast they grow up. One of her kids is two-years old, and one is seven months old. She cannot fathom, already, how you deal with them getting older so fast. An airport cop came by and she asked him about his newly born daughter. He took out his phone and called up a picture, then turned the phone to us, showing us a tiny little girl sitting on a couch next to an enormous pumpkin.
"You look after that girl, now!" Valerie said. He smiled and resumed his patrol.
A few moments later, the sound of an airplane. "Here it is," she said, pointing over the main terminal. And up over the airport leapt the Southwest plane. Blue and red and yellow winging off into the sky, delivering my boy to his mother.
"How do you know it's his?" I asked, stupidly.
She gave me a look. "I know."
I watched his plane go off into the night sky, out of sight, and tried again to hold back tears.
We got up.
She patted me on the shoulder and told me, again, that he'd be fine and walked on to her next assignment.
"Wait," I called after her. "What's your name?"
"Valerie."
I would have been such a mess without her.
Sometimes people are awesome.
And yes, He got to his destination less than an hour later, and his mom sent me a picture. Him looking so happy, and Sapphire clearly relieved, clutched to his body.
