The day before Gavin’s spring break ended, we remembered that we had to buy a return flight for him. He spent most of his spring break at grannies house on Oahu just after her recovery. We’ve talked about sending Gavin unaccompanied on a plane to save some money for the past few trips, but for one reason or another, someone always ended up going with him. Now there was no reason for someone to spend the extra money to take an extra trip to pick up Gavin. We finally decided to buy Gavin a ticket for an unaccompanied inter-island plane ride. We were all a little nervous about it, but Gavin said he was brave and could do it, so we did.
Mary dropped him off at the airport and was able to get a special pass to bring him down to his gate. There were two other unaccompanied kids and a person in a wheelchair that also needed assistance. The other two kids didn’t have any of the paperwork that they needed. Their parents bought them a regular ticket and just sent them down to the gates. Gavin had all his paperwork ready to go. He handed it to the unorganized attendant who was busy trying to get these other two kids in order. Gavin wasn’t given any instructions, so when he noticed the man in the wheel chair being pushed to their plane, Gavin walked out onto the tarmac and was ready to head to his plane. He was very brave. The attendant chased him down and let him know that when she was done with the other kids, they would all walk out together.
Mary watched as the kids were all put on the plane. After all the other passengers were boarded, she watched as the plane backed out of the gate, drove around to the runway and took off.
Meanwhile, Me, Holly, and Leif arrived at the airport on our end to see about picking Gavin up. At the check-in counter, they assured us that Gavin would be escorted off the plane and to the baggage claim where we can meet him. They would not give us a temporary pass to meet him at the gate.
We walked down to where we were to meet Gavin. His plane was supposed to land at 4:20pm. While we were waiting, we played “deactivate the baby”, where you hold up an imaginary remote control and go “p-chewwww” and the baby falls down, does a short breakdance and then lies still on the ground. He was in self-wake mode and got up to do it again. At 4:30pm, we got a call from Mary with word on whether or not we picked up Gavin. There was no sign of him yet. Apparently the plane was late. I pushed Leif around in circles in his stroller as we waited some more. I strolled Leif down to a water fountain to get a drink, and on the way back Holly announced “There he is”. We walked to the exit where Holly signed fo Gavin like a packaged being delivered by UPS. Leif gave him a big bear hug. We all took our rounds hugging. We were so relieved. It is good to have our boy back.
I picked up Gavin’s bag and we headed for the car. We called granny to let her know that we had the boy and he was safe. Gavin was all excited about his trip all by himself and preceded to tell us all about it while we took the short walk to our car. I’m so proud of him.