I see their heads, a pair of pinballs bouncing in the distance, as they scan the hall between the taller, faster-moving, arrivals. Dad’s thick heavy straight hair has a glass-fibre-optic luminance that is easily held in view.
Heading towards them, restraining the impulse to run, my strides extend. I’m bound to fall over if I run amongst unsuspecting normal people. A quick glance around confirms that adults don’t run in arrivals lounges. I’m an adult now. I walk, like the other arrrivals around my parents, very very very fast.
After the 200yrd dash I manage to approach dad head-on and get both arms around his shoulders before he’d recognised me. His shoulders? I don’t remember ever having been able to reach his shoulders before now. He kisses my cheek in front of my ear. He can no longer reach my forehead. Standing upright with his familiar cheshire cattish grin while Mum joins the hug simultaneously giggling and chattering. They had, they explained, ‘seen’ me but not recognised me…..
I hug-herd them to the luggage reclaimation rack while mother spills the first few lines of this story, then that, then the other, and another. I barely have time to savour the images she draws before being pulled to the next story. Dad grins silently, keeping his sparkly dark blue eyes trained on the baggage go-round, going round. In this moment of our studying the baggage go round, unobserved chattering mother wanders off, disappearing into the crowd, giggling and chatting to herself as she goes.
Is this how toddlers’ parents feel when they realise they can no longer see or hear their their toddler?
I’ll never know.