Pre-flight Terrors
My mother (who has been visiting with me these past few months) was set to leave for home yesterday and after a weekend filled with running around to get last minute things done and stowed away etc, we headed to SFO early for a change. The counter area was empty and we all clapped ourselves on the back for finally being on the ball and getting some time for a proper good bye.
No luck there.
I guess the part where I started to get concerned is when the lady at the counter claimed that we didn't have a reservation, period. And she couldn't find my mother's name. At all. After some finagling she gives us a boarding pass - with the completely wrong name on it. And it's only to NY, where my mom was supposed to get another boarding pass to KRT. Yeah, I had flashes of my Mom in DHS custody trying to explain to them why she was trying to get on a long haul flight with a false name.
Rewind and point out the fact that this is not my mother's name. Then explain that she will have a hard time navigating the labyrinth of JFK immigration and airline representatives. Cut to an hour later. We have discovered that some rocket scientist has managed to not put my mother's name correctly into the original ticket and hence we have to figure out a way to make sure the two names correspond. It took forever, but the upshot was that the counter folks gave us passes so we could take my mother into the gate area.
That was a massive shocker. I didn't even know you could do that! I haven't been in to the gate area without a boarding card in 9 years. I kept feeling like I was doing something terribly naughty... but anyway, it was just lovely to be able to spend that last bit of time with my mother before she left. Now, I have all this time.... and I don't know what to do with it.