~o:> Prelude to Two Kisses

Kiss One:

Kiss Two:

And this is how it all came about:

The little family, waiting at the airport.  The plane: 35 minutes late.

Chaz and L, happy.

Happy again.  This is a better shot of both, but I loved the love in the first image.

Boys, waiting.  One with airplane.

Boys, taking a walk.  The small one has an airplane bedroom, so they are looking for airplanes, but these days, if you don’t have a ticket, airplanes are hard to find.

Still walking.  You can see the balloons belonging to other Welcome Home Elder families.

Finally.  Airplane tails.  Just visible beyond the International Terminal.

Loved this side glance.

Other than the fact that Scoots is sucking the ends off his fingers, I really like the light here.  And G’s face.  I really like G’s face.

Girls, staying busy.  Ah, technology.  Maybe they’re texting each other.

THEN:

The Arrivals board changes.  Our flights’ status is now: LANDED.

So we rush to the foot of the escalator.  Because you know how quickly planes get into dock and unload.

Cammon is holding his big camera and Ginna.  Ginna is actually inside the iPhone, which is streaming our waiting directly to Rhode Island.

Hi,  GIN!!!

Woops.  People coming.  But this surge of people came from D.C., not Atlanta.  And the next group, maybe ten minutes later – from Cincinnati.  We stand at the foot of that escalator unwaveringly, staring at all the faces as they appear at the top of the moving stair.  It finally occurs to me that we might be making some of these people very nervous, scrutinizing them the way we are.  Others, unused to SLC airport and its culture, might be wondering if somebody really, really famous is supposed to be getting off a plane somewhere and coming down this escalator.  We do have that paparazzi air about us.

Finally, I start taking pictures of random people.  We are having a discussion sparked by a random person I did NOT take a picture of, who had just come down the stairs dressed for an ambassador’s ball or something.

“Some people still really dress up to travel,” I remark, thinking about how I don’t.

“I still dress up,” Chaz says smugly.  “WAY up.”

As you may recall.

This woman chose casual but classy.

This woman was moving too fast for you to see how really good she looked – jewelry and all.

This kid is more my style.

Then Chaz looks up and starts to giggle.  “Brown corduroy cargo shorts, long sleeved blue T-shirt, yellow argyle sweater vest, why????”  She turns to me and says wickedly, “I guess some people do still dress up.”

Then this woman came down.  You can see that I gave up trying to take the tungsten out of my pictures by this point.  Dang auto white balance.  I shot her because of the look of absolute delight on her face when she looked down and saw this little boy at the bottom of the steps.

THEN.  Suddenly.  Our only warning— a family of five wearing Argentine World Cup jerseys:

This, at the top of the escalator.

Take in the following interminable series of shots and tell me what the photographer was feeling:

That glowing smile.  The mother, bleary eyed with emotion, not noticing she’s out of focus.  SUCH SLOW STAIRS.

You have already seen the shot that comes next:

The mom tossed off the camera to Chaz like a lateral pass and  tackled the fresh faced, grinning young man.  Then Chaz passed it back and took over the tackling.

This is more or less what the mom looked like after her hug, too.  I missed Char’s face over his shoulder because I couldn’t get to the proper  side in time.  Then the camera jammed up, and I missed the big embrace (cam, m and g, all mushed together) which makes me really, really sad.  Because they were beautiful, and I wanted to be able to look at them over and over again over the years.  It just wasn’t a “Can you do that again?” thing.  So I have only the aftermath of them, and hope I never forget the memory part.

Meeting Scoots, who was only a month or so old when M left.

And that is where the kisses came in.

Talking to Gin, who has been watching this entire time.

Then we jumped into the car and headed out to our favorite Burger place – M’s request – two years’ dream.  And there, surprise, surprise—in walks MY DAD and my SISTER, who have driven all the way up from Texas to join us at this very moment.  M’s mouth falls open and he looks very blank.  Disorienting the already disoriented is childs’ play, really.  There are no pictures.  We were all too busy eating.  And after ALL of that, we head home, where there is supposed to be a surprise waiting:

The little sandwhich shop on Center, right on the way home, will – for $20 – put up a WELCOME HOME sign with your kid’s name on it.  So we paid up, and we took him home this way so he’d see that very thing – his name, glowing up there where so many of his older friends had glowed in past years.

We drove down, carefully shaping his attention so he’d see – NOTHING.  THE SIGN WAS EMPTY.

But no – not empty.  There were the words:

on it.  So we pulled over in front of the place, only to find the guy JUST PUTTING THE NAME ON.  Like, only a few hours late.

But we couldn’t wait for the rest because Scoots had hit the skids and needed his bed. And it turned out we didn’t need that old sign anyway, because when we came home, we found this –

created by some sneaky local natives.

In detail –

(apologies to Master C. here – the photographer, again, forgot to bring down her ISO and over exposed the heck out of his drawings. So on a later date, I promise to scan and present his work in detail also)

So we went home and took shots of MY side of the fam – my dear and beloved sister on the left, my dignified and brilliant father next to her, my niece, my sister-in-law and my brother (all wonderful adjectives earned even if not listed).  Just amazing – Dad and his children – all together in one place at one time.  It hardly ever happens.  Oh, and Chaz.  Oh, OH, and Murphy.

We.  are an American Family.

Weird, wonderful and what life is all about.  LONG MAY WE WAVE.

And that was pretty much the end of the story of the kisses.

Now we start the rest of the story.  I wonder where it will take us.