Overheard at the Gate

Recently, I was offered and accepted a new job at the airport. I work at the gates and sometimes I am assigned a flight that is going to the city in which my first born lived from about the time he was five years old.

I cannot tell you how hard it is to stay focused on the job while I assist 50 passengers to board an airplane departing to the city where my son grew up. Absolutely crazy making for me. The pleasant, middle aged woman handing me her boarding pass may have been his next door neighbor. Her children may have played with him. She may have served him lunch at her kitchen table and been lucky enough to see my 7 year old son with mac and cheese smooshed on his chin. If she did, I hope she was kind to him. And if she was, I hope many blessings for her.

That older, refined gentleman wearing the grey vest may have been his 8th grade teacher and had the opportunity to encourage my son during a particularily rough school year. If he did, I hope he was kind to him. And if he was, I hope many blessings for him.

Any young man or woman handing me a boarding pass may have graduated from high school with my son.

One time, a young man boarding the plane to my son's hometown stopped dead in his tracks beside me as he handed over his boarding pass. He gaped at me with that "just seen a ghost" expression. I wondered especially if he might be a friend to my son and recognized me in away. My son and I look much alike. And of all my sons, my first born looks the most like me.

Sometimes, I am at the gate for a flight to another city and someone will rush to the counter in a panic to ask where is the gate to XXX city; the town where my son's
adoptive family still lives. I remain in professional mode and look up the gate number for the passenger.

Inside, I am screaming, "Do you know my son? Do you know the **** family?"
I quell that internal voice and do not allow myself to speak.

I do not wish to breech any trust that I have been able to build with my son. Anything that I learn of his parents needs to come directly from him. The world is really very small and it is likely that one of the passengers I encounter traveling to XXX does know my son or his adoptive parents. And my son and I are
forming our own relationship. As his mother, I feel that I have the primary responsibilty in building a foundation of trust and must do everything within my power to create and sustain an atmosphere of trust and safety within our relationship.

So as desperately hungry, as voracious as I am on some days to learn details of my son as a child or a teenager, I have to be patient and wait for the details that come from him; or any details that someday, I may learn from his adoptive family.

And what really matters the most to me is to know my son in the present and the opportunity to know and share in his life right now. My son is very kind to me.
And each day I hope and pray for many blessings on him.

About two weeks ago, I was working at the gate and I overheard a conversation between two men. One of them lives here in Minneapolis and was flying to his hometown of XXX city; my son's childhood home. This passenger said that if you plunked yourself down in a suburb of Minneapolis and then punked yourself down in a suburb of XXX city, you would not be able to tell the difference. Each location has rolling hills, lots of trees and lakes and rivers.


I learned this tidbit of my son's life without stepping over a trust breeching boundary. In a way, I was thrilled to have this morsel of information. And I listened and committed it to memory. As always it is bittersweet to hear and to take in.