In a previous post I discussed a little about New Year’s Eve and traditions. One other tradition involving the holidays is the Christmas newsletter. Don’t worry; I’m not going to post one here. Unless you want me to. No? You’re sure? Just check . . . No? Okay.
This year we went with the New Year’s newsletter. We made up an excuse for not sending the
letter before Christmas; something about another letter being a lot of “white
noise,” but the truth is we (mostly me) were lazy. In the newsletter, I mentioned my Dad and
brother, Mike, coming to Minnesota for Father’s Day.
They flew into Minneapolis on the Thursday before Father’s
Day. I arrived early at Terminal 2,
hoping to wait outside in the car as the former Lindberg Terminal is pretty lax
when it comes to idling cars. You will
be waved off after a while, but if you time it right, you can wait for a good 15-20
minutes. Unfortunately, the terminal was
being renovated and the loading/unloading zone was blocked off, so I had to park. Fortunately, the flight was late, so I got my
money’s worth in parking.
After several laps around the Ticketing and Baggage Claim
areas, making sure I didn’t miss them, I saw Dad and Mike exiting the Gate
area. It’s been about three years since
I’ve seen my Dad, and I worried I wouldn’t recognize him. My Dad lives in Connecticut and my brother in
Boston, so schedules and finances have prevented us from having frequent get-togethers. We do stay in touch with phone calls and
emails every few weeks, but those become insufficient over long periods.
I needn’t have worried though, as my brother is about my
height, which is taller than average, and I had a clear view of him; and my Dad
looks like me, but with less hair and about the same amount of weight stuffed
into a five inch shorter frame. We
exchanged familial handshakes and pleasantries (the flight was good), and Dad told of some drama when checking in
at Logan. In the flurry of activity to
take the train to Boston to meet my brother, he had forgotten to bring his
identification and didn’t realize until he was at the counter.
“You should have taken advantage of your age and started to shake and tell them you were confused,” I joked.
“He did! His hands were trembling and he looked bewildered,” my brother revealed.
I felt bad then and decided not to pursue it further. Dad had to go through extra security until
TSA confirmed he wasn’t a threat. Later,
we learned his ID was left in his checkbook on a table at home and he had it FedEx
to him for Saturday delivery. We walked
to the car and drove home.
