James is gone
I got to spend a few hours with James before he left. I took him out to lunch and asked him where he wanted to go. "Maybe I should get some Korean."
"Are you sure?" I said.
"Wait, maybe that's a bad idea," he said. He is going to have a lot of time to eat Korean food this year. I hope he stays away from the live octopus. So we went to a 50s diner instead.
I volunteered to drive him and his family to the airport since I had the minivan. I think I caused his mother's heart to fly up into her throat a few times with some sudden stops. His flight left at six, so we dropped James and Maggie at the departures entrance and went to park the car.
When his mom and I got into the Continental ticket center, James and his sister looked very frazzled. Continental told them that the six o'clock flight was canceled (they didn't give a reason), but they could put him on the 4:40 flight. It was 4:20. If he didn't make it to Newark, he'd miss his flight to Korea. Luckily, it was a slow day, and three screeners worked on his luggage at once. They even flipped through his notebook. Did they think he had bomb schematics?
When my dad was coming back from Afghanistan, he bought my mom a beautiful stone tea set, and then when he got to Turkey, he bought some wrapping paper, scissors, and tape. He just stuck the scissors in his back pocket when he went to the airport. Whoops.
But James ran for the metal detector, but he stopped long enough to give me a kiss and hug his mother and sister goodbye. He made it through the detector just as they were calling for final boarding on his plane, and he got on the plane at 4:33.
It was probably for the best that his leaving was so rushed. It didn't give us time to get very sad. I just feel an ache inside right now. His family is going to Korea for Christmas, and he said he'd write me long letters, and fly to Baltimore for a week. We've been such a calm couple, I'm surprised that I got so emotional over our separation. But Korea is a looong way away.
