Not having written in a while, I thought I’d take a large step into the personal with a story that probably qualifies as one of the most romantic experiences in my life.  Something that was quite amazing and cool at the time and that today, unfortunately, would be impossible to pull off.

As a footnote, it may seem odd to be sharing, given I’m divorced, and this is something that was part of our married life, but I don’t honestly care.  Good memories last, and this one qualifies.

Explaining the background…

Back in April of 1997, I was starting a new consulting job that required us to travel out to Boston for three consecutive weeks of training/orientation.  Given that the job was formal attire at the time and it was a full-week schedule, it was a not a “traveling light” situation and there were bags to carry, which made slugging through the airport a hassle (the relevance of this part will be explained later).

On a separate note, a month or two earlier, Kathy had planned a weekend to visit her best friend in Houston, and the dates ultimately overlapped when I was traveling out for training.  This meant that she’d be out of town over one of the weekends when I was only home for a couple days.  When we realized the conflict, we decided not to do anything about it, though it wasn’t fun to have almost two weeks without seeing each other.

Bending the space/time continuum…

When the week eventually rolled around where this was going to happen, it became apparent that there was a chance I might be able to wrap up my training on Friday a little earlier than expected and try to see Kathy before she flew out to Houston (my original flight was late in the day and hers was mid-afternoon).  While I knew Kathy’s flight number and take off time, I didn’t tell her what I was trying to do, figuring that it would be really disappointing if it didn’t work out (and it would be better if I was the only one disappointed, as opposed to both of us), and to pull it off as a surprise would also be pretty cool.

As luck would have it, we finished relatively early, I blew out of the office and told the cab driver in Cambridge that I was in a life and death situation and needed to get to Logan.  He got us there in a timeframe that would be better not to think about, I threw him a huge tip, grabbed my garment bag and smaller (but relatively heavy) carry-on and ran to the United terminal, putting myself on standby for the first available flight back to Chicago, which I managed to get.  I eagerly rode out the few hours of the flight, and tried to figure out what to do when the plane reached the gate.  Upon touchdown and eventual ‘debarkation’, I grabbed my carry-ons and fought though the crowd to reach the terminal.

Thirty minutes and counting…

I landed about 30 minutes (at most) before Kathy’s flight was scheduled to take off.  She was booked on American Airlines, and I had just landed in United Terminal 1 – C Concourse.  Anyone who knows O’Hare airport now realizes that I was in the farther United terminal, needed to run (with the two heavy bags) through that terminal, down the stairs, into the tunnel with the rainbow lights and famous “the moving walkway is now ending, please look down” voice, back up the stairs, through the B Concourse and over TWO terminals to where the American Airlines flights are…

With a healthy fear of failure to keep me going, I eventually reached Terminal 3, ran to the Departures monitors and located the gate for Kathy’s flight.  Feeling like I was about to experience a moment worthy of TV commercial footage, I raced to the gate to find… no one but the woman at the ticket counter.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“We just finished boarding the plane.”

“Oh my God, you have got to be kidding me.”

I looked out the windows, and there was her plane.  The door was still open and people could still board, but I probably missed her in the gate area by less than 15 minutes.  I was standing there, completely out of breath, in a suit, sweating from having literally run across most of the airport with my bags in tow, and I failed…

I looked at the woman behind the ticket counter and said something along the lines of “I can’t believe it.  I literally just flew in from Boston. I haven’t seen my wife in a week.  She’s going to Houston for the weekend, I wanted to surprise her, and now I’m not going to see her for over another week because I’m heading back out of town.”

Without saying a word, she put a piece of paper and pen on the counter… “What’s her name?  Write a note for her.”  She gets on the phone to call the plane as she’s pulling up Kathy’s passenger info.

I wrote a short note (which I’m not sharing here), but part of the message was “It looks like I just missed you.”  I handed it back to the woman at the ticketing desk, she took it over to a flight attendant who appeared at the gate doorway, handed her the note, and she swiftly disappeared.

After thanking the woman profusely, I decided to sit for a minute, rest from all the rushing, and watch Kathy’s plane leave the gate.

A few minutes later, they hadn’t gone anywhere and the flight attendant reappeared.  She handed the ticketing woman the piece of paper, on which Kathy had written a response.  The flight attendants were apparently now in the business of helping pass around our personal notes.  Kathy was surprised and happy that I tried to get there… albeit slightly disappointed at the outcome.

Sitting at the gate, looking at the note for a few minutes, I began wondering why the plane hadn’t moved and went back to the ticket counter to ask.  “The flight crew is delayed.  They don’t have a pilot right now.”  Oh great, they got on the plane and can’t even go anywhere… Had they known this before, maybe they could’ve held up the boarding a little and I would’ve seen her… I went and sat back down.

A couple minutes of inactivity later, the woman behind the desk got on the phone, had a short conversation, wrote something down on a piece of paper, then gestured to me to come over.  I walked to the desk, she handed me the piece of paper (which had a seat number on it) and she pointed to the gate.  “Go ahead.”

WHAT?  “Wait a second, what about my bags?  I shouldn’t just leave them there, should I?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll watch them for you.  Go see your wife.”

At that moment, I could’ve jumped over the counter and kissed that woman… she picks up the phone again, says “He’s coming“, hangs up, and says “Ok.”

With no ticket and Kathy’s seat number written on a scrap of paper in hand, I walked down the ramp, to the entrance of the plane, where all of the flight attendants were standing, with huge smiles on their faces, as if I was somehow participating in a story larger than my own, one of them pointing me in the direction of Kathy’s seat.

At this point, things were a bit awkward.. because none of the passengers seemed to have any idea why the heck they had boarded the plane about twenty minutes earlier, were buckled up in their seats, and now some strange dude was walking down the completely vacant aisle looking for someone.  Having taken many flights over the years, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced something quite like that, because everyone was fully seated, ready to push back, and some were looking at me as if I had something to do with why they were still stuck there… Out of a sense of guilt or obligation to explain myself, I said “It’s not me, there’s no pilot on this plane yet…” a couple times as I walked through the plane.

Eventually I got to Kathy’s row, she was in the window seat looking outside and didn’t see me right away, and the other two passengers looked at me like “What do you want?”

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t seen my wife in a month (yes, I exaggerated to get them to move) and they let me come aboard to see her before you leave.  There’s no pilot on the plane right now anyway…”

They got up, she got up, (romantic moment I’m not describing)… people actually applauded… wow.  Finally, I gave her a big hug, told her to have a great trip, headed back to the exit, the flight attendants all gave me another huge set of smiles and nods of approval, I thanked all of them, and walked back to the gate.

As I got back into the terminal, the flight crew arrived, I gave the woman behind the ticket desk a huge hug for creating a memory I knew would last forever (for both of us) and headed home…

It’s truly amazing what people will do under the right circumstances.  There is a line from William Hurt in the movie The Village that I’ve always liked a lot, which is “The World moves for Love…  It kneels before it… in awe.”

On one very special day, many years ago, I can honestly say that statement was very true… and I will forever be grateful to those people who made it possible.

[Re-reading this note, I want to clarify one important point: this story is not about the guy who ran through the airport, it’s about the girl on the plane who was worth seeing, even for the briefest moment.  Many people may want to find a person who is willing to do the running, but I’d rather find the person worth running to… because, when you’ve found them, the running isn’t really an effort at all]

-CJG 04/09/2014