Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this: Somehow
find a way to sneak up behind your family at the airport and wrap
your arms around them before they have any idea what’s going
on.
You didn’t always have to be an Ethan Hunt or a James Phelps to
surprise your family at the airport. I remember as a young child
getting in the car all the time with my mom and my brothers and
sister to go to the airport. My dad seemed to constantly be on
business trips.
Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this: Somehow find a way to sneak up behind your family at the airport and wrap your arms around them before they have any idea what’s going on.
You didn’t always have to be an Ethan Hunt or a James Phelps to surprise your family at the airport. I remember as a young child getting in the car all the time with my mom and my brothers and sister to go to the airport. My dad seemed to constantly be on business trips.
Though I was too young to understand what the engineering director was doing or where he was going, I always looked forward to the trips to the old Stapleton Airport in Denver to see him for the first time in a week after he went away on business trips.
I used to stand up on the seats at the gate and wait, watching person after person emerge from the plane and greet their loved ones. I always hoped that my dad was the first off the plane. I didn’t have any understanding of assigned seating or exiting the plane by rows. I just wanted him to miss us so much that he would hurry past the others and come through the doors and into our arms before any one else.
That was the best part of going out to the gate to greet loved ones. You rarely ever saw them until they came out into the concourse and you were in each other’s arms instantly, getting to share the emotion of being loved and missed.
As I grew up and my friends went to universities in different cities or when they went on vacation, the friends that were still around would come to the airport and greet them at the gate when they returned. I remember how we used to make signs like we were airport limo drivers and would hold them up as people came out into the concourse.
Our visiting or returning friend would come racing out and hug everyone like we hadn’t seen each other in years even if it had been just a week. We loved making a scene out of it and attracting attention from everyone in the concourse.
Unfortunately, these special moments have become a thing of the past. After the events of Sept. 11, which restricted access to the concourses and gates, we can no longer share these kind of moments and children can’t climb up on chairs and race into their parent’s arms.
Instead we greet our families at the baggage claim or at passenger pickup, where you rarely get the same raw emotional greetings because you see your loved one walking toward you well before you actually see them.
When I took my roommate to San Jose International Airport last week so he could fly home to see his family, I saw one of these rare greetings. A young woman had come out of the gate and unexpectedly jumped into a young man’s arms. He had no idea it was coming, and it was the most beautiful moment I had seen in a long time. The image stuck with me.
With this in mind, I began to make plans for my own trip to Colorado. By the time you read this, I hope to have thoroughly surprised my my dad and my brothers at Denver International Airport when they come to pick me on Christmas Eve. But I know the task will not be as easy as it used to be. It takes planning and timing.
I know for a fact that my plane will come into Denver at 6:40 p.m. Christmas Eve. I also know the strategy involved. Any combination of my dad or my two brothers will arrive at passenger pickup between 6:45 and 7 p.m. But if they arrive early, they will surely go up the escalator to baggage claim. The key will be focus. I must constantly be on alert to spot my family members before they see me.
I can see it now. I’m sure they will go to passenger pickup and wait for about 10 seconds before they decide to try and find me themselves. Undoubtedly, they will find my baggage carousel or be standing at the top of the escalators, looking around for me.
My job will be simple in theory but all but impossible to attempt. All I have to do is not go right to baggage claim after I get off the plane. I will have to hang out and scope the situation. Once I know where my brothers and my dad are located – and without my baggage to hold me back – I will have to find a way to avert their glances and sneak up behind them.
Like Hunt or Phelps, I will have to be cunning and fully understand the layout of the airport to be successful.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the ability to come down from the rafters using high-tech equipment or have spotters and other agents looking out for me like in the movies, and I can’t really take any lessons from Phelps, being that I wasn’t even born yet when the show went off the air. This is going to be a solo mission.
Unfortunately, the events of Sept. 11th have changed the way we conduct many parts of our lives. But, at the same time, it made many of us think twice about the importance of family in general.
Fortunately, I am lucky enough to be home for the holidays and lucky to have my main concern to be how best to surprise my family at the airport.
I will spend my few days catching up with them and hitting the slopes, with should have plenty of snow if any of the storms that came through here made their way over the Rocky Mountains.
Although my bags are filled presents for everyone in my family, but I know my being there for Christmas would be more than enough for them.
So for all of you, make sure that among all the gifts and dollars spent during the holidays that you make time to give each other the most important holiday gift of all. Yourself.
And who knows, maybe when I make it out to the baggage claim area trying to sneak up on my family members searching me out one of my brothers or my dad will sneak up from behind and hug me, before I have any idea what’s going on.
Regardless, this message will self-destruct in five seconds.
Dave Steffenson is assistant editor for The Gilroy Dispatch. Check in next week to find out the exciting finish to this episode.
