The Airport

It was mid-morning in the Minneapolis airport, and I was sitting alone with an iced coffee and a book indulging in the rare kind of quiet that once felt impossible.

That’s when I saw them.

A dad pushing a stroller quickly past my gate, fresh off a flight, looking rushed and worn thin in the way traveling parents often do. Inside the stroller, a little girl was crying—not just loud, but desperate. A long, stretched-out wail searching the air for something it couldn’t find:

“I want mommmmmmyyyyyy.”

There was a longing in it that filled the air around them. Like she had slipped out of safety and didn’t know how to get back.

Her dad seemed to be doing everything right—soft voice, steady movement, calm reassurance—but you could feel the truth underneath it: He was hanging on by a thread. Trying desperately to be enough in a moment that didn’t belong to him.

And before I even had time to think, relief flooded my body. Relief that I wasn’t pacing an airport with a crying child. Relief that I could sit still. Relief that my drink was still cold. Relief that this season of motherhood was behind me.

Then, just as quickly, the relief gave way to something else. A quiet sadness, deep and sudden. I’ll never have that again, I thought. I remembered traveling with my own boys. Holding a baby and running through silent calculations:

Will he cry the whole flight?
Will people be annoyed?
Will he sleep?
Will I?

The constant vigilance of early motherhood, that intense love braided tightly with fear, responsibility, and bone-deep exhaustion. Back then, I dreamed about this quieter life. The one where I could sit alone in an airport with a drink that stayed cold.

But now that I was here, I felt something I hadn’t expected:

Grief.

Because somewhere along the way, without ceremony or warning, there had been a last time. The last time I carried one of them while they slept. Breath warm on my neck. A little body heavy against my shoulder. My back aching as I tried not to wake him. An ordinary moment quietly becoming the last of its kind.

Motherhood, I’m learning, is made of contradictions.

Pride and pain.
Relief and grief.
Freedom and longing.
Excitement for who they are becoming,
and sadness for the versions of them I can never hold again.

All of it true at once.

So now I’m trying to hold this season differently. Not by clinging. Not by wishing time backward. But by noticing what is still here.

A phone call on the way home just to talk.
A teenage boy wandering downstairs to watch a movie beside me.
An unexpected hug.
An “I love you, Mom.”
An“I appreciate you—especially for dinner.”

Small moments that don’t look extraordinary from the outside but feel enormous when you understand they won’t last forever.

Don’t get me wrong, I do love this season. I love having teenagers. I love watching them become who they’re meant to be. They are funny and thoughtful and astonishingly good humans. There is pride here. And joy. And real excitement for where their lives are going.

And still—there is grief. For what is gone. And the lasts that I missed without even noticing. But maybe this is what loving our children always meant: Knowing we are raising people we will one day miss while they are still standing right in front of us.

Nothing about that is simple.
But it is, somehow,
still beautiful.