At that moment I saw Madison running thought the doors of domestic arrivals, so happy to see me, so excited to be in Virginia, so happy to be home.

It was the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, and we had been waiting around the whole day waiting to go to the airport to pick up my cousin Natalie, 24, and her daughter Madison who was 5.  Their flight didn’t land until nine that night, and we had been pretty anxious the whole day.  Madison and Natalie had recently moved to California, due to Natalie’s finance Rob’s new job. I hadn’t seen them in so long and I wasn’t sure what I was going to do or say when I saw them.

My mom and I got to Gram and Gramps, about to go to Dulles to see Natalie and Madison. We all got in the car and started the ten minute drive over to the airport.

During the car ride, we didn’t talk very much. We left the house at 8:00, even though their flight wasn’t going to land for an hour. I knew that it was going to take forever for them to get there, and I wasn’t really looking forward to the wait. Gramps has always been really prepared for anything that might come, and I knew that he wanted to leave early just uncase there was any heavy traffic.

Of course, we got to the airport at about 8:15, and we all sat down at in the chairs by the doors in which Natalie and Madison would be coming in. My mom and I went over the mini gift store to buy a soda and get a magazine to read.

The time seemed to go by really slow. I basically stared at the wall for an hour, waiting for someone’s cell phone to ring and say that Natalie and Madison would be here any minute. I glanced over to the clock, and saw that is was about 8:55. Right about that time Natalie called and said that she and Madison had just landed. Even though they had landed, they still had to take the shuttle to the other terminal so it would still be about another twenty minutes.

 After another long wait, I went over the doors and watched for Natalie and Madison. I glanced over at my grandfather. He was so excited that I thought he might just have a heart attack right then and there.  He and my grandma had taken care of Madison since she was six months, and he had missed her terribly.  I looked at him, his eyes fixed at the door, his body shaking, his heart pumping, he blinked a few times and then I knew. 

At that moment I saw Madison running thought the doors of domestic arrivals, so happy to see me, so excited to be in Virginia, so happy to be home.

This entry was written by ben and posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 4:34 pm and is filed under Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.