Fly Away — Susan Sawyers

Emotion is one of the things I neglected to schedule the week the 14 year-old headed north to sleep away camp. After a series of attempts to manipulate the family schedule in order to accompany her to the camp bus meeting sight, we opted to send her to Toronto as an unaccompanied minor, or UM in airline parlance. She’d fly north and meet a friend and together they would board the bus and make their way to their cabins in the woods.

But here’s the thing, after three gate changes at LaGuardia airport; the boarding pass read C6, the monitor said C8 and American Airlines flight 4851 ultimately departed from Gate C1. The 14-year old broke down in anticipation.

“I don’t want to go to camp,” she whimpered as alligator tears filled her eyes.

“Oh darling,” I said stalling to come up with words to soothe. “It’s scary not knowing what to expect.”

I held her in my arms, her curly-headed locks felt soft against my cheek. We breathed together in silence. We reviewed UM procedure. For a cool and mandatory $100, an airline representative would walk her from the gate to the plane where a flight attendant would greet her and show her to her seat. Upon arrival in Toronto, a flight attendant would walk her to the gate where she would be met by Canadian airline personnel. And we know that Canadians tend to be mellow so that was something she looked forward to. The Canadian airline representative would accompany the 14 year-old through customs at which point our friend, Liza, who was traveling on an American Airlines flight from Los Angeles due in just minutes after the LaGuardia flight, would (assuming the planets were aligned) arrive and take the UM into her care.

I was surprised to see the 14-year old cry. She’d flown recently with a friend from Los Angeles to New York but this was her first trip solo and with the gate change, the new gate guard was in a tizzy given the pressure to board the plane on time. The guard, Eugenia, had no assistance and she would have to leave her perch to take the 14-year old and “hand her off” to someone on the plane.

But that was not our problem. Slow, deep breaths on the part of mother and daughter soothed to a degree.

“Wait here,” Eugenia said brusquely as she moved away from the gate to her terminal perch to register the UM. As the last passenger to board, normally the UMs are the first (we didn’t mind since it gave mother and child more time together), the 14-year old wiped her eyes and headed down the tarmac with Eugenia.

I could see my daughter as she raised the window shade over the wing, seat 10A on an American Eagle Embraer jet, tail number 709. She rang my phone just as I began to dial hers. “I can’t see you,” she sighed. The terminal windows were blacked out. But I could see her. I waved wildly as the plane pushed back (it’s a good thing the 14 year-old couldn’t see me, she would have been mortified). The plane came to a halt for what felt to me like an eternal ten minutes or more, before making a right hand turn onto the open runway, ready for takeoff.

As the parent of an UM, I was instructed by Gate Guard Eugenia NOT to leave the airport until the plane was airborne. I could check in with any airline personnel for confirmation. I tracked down our intermediate gate handler, Etsy, from C8, who’d warmly introduced herself to us as the person that would walk the 14-year old to the on board flight attendant. Etsy was kind, and her gentle Caribbean lilt added comfort to the stress of separation both before the gate change and after.

Fortunately, for all of us, the 14 year-old, though late on departure, arrived in Toronto on time as did “Aunt Liza” who flew in from Los Angeles with her ten-year old camper. The three Americans met at baggage claim within 30 minutes of their respective arrivals and the UM was “handed over” to her designated guardian.

I hadn’t anticipated the emotional strain that arose in sending my 14 year-old off into the world, and I suspect, it won’t be the last time. There’s a big world out there, so much to see, so much to learn. The great thing is that the learning never stops, the methodology may change but whew. So while she is safely en route to camp, I’m supposed to bounce back into my other realities: journalism school, parenting my ten-year-old son, and matrimonial obligations. Boing.