Airport Goodbye

I dropped my Mom off at the airport this morning. It's very hard to say goodbye to her, harder than it is to say goodbye to anyone else. She'll fly back to Ohio, back to the place I left. Every time Mom leaves I think of her going back to the Ohio I grew up in, but when I come home for visits I realize that it's a different place and I'm a different person now. Mom, though--she's always the same, only a little older.

I love my parents so much. Someday they'll get too old to take care of themselves very well, which is hard to accept. In my mind, Mom and Dad are ageless to me, locked in their mid-40s forever. But Mom just turned 62. Remember how old 62 used to be? Someone who was 62 was slow, with white hair and a polyester pantsuit. Mom is none of those things.

The older I get, the closer I want to be to my family. I don't know if it will ever happen, though. I love the idea of moving back to Marietta, but the reality of it is something altogether different. In the meantime, twice a year we have these airport goodbyes.

I dropped Mom off at the curb of the terminal, where all of the taxis zip in and out. Every minute there are farewells and greetings there, but they mean nothing to me. I put the hazard lights on, we pull Mom's luggage out of the back seat, embrace, and then I get back in the car as she pulls her rolly suitcase through the automatic doors. She gets in the check-in line, but I don't see it because I pull out and drive away, drive off to work with the radio on, playing the morning news. The faster you go back to your regular life, the less it hurts.