Unaccompanied

We tootled up to Dubai at 10 pm on Saturday night to drop the lads off at the airport. They’re catching the plane back to Adelaide for a stay with their granny before I join them later in August. They’re flying as unaccompanied minors. I wanted to take a photograph but The Floppy Teen was stroppy and wouldn’t let me. So here’s one I prepared earlier.

That’s last year’s. So that’s two years in a row they’ve been packed off to Australia on their own and in this life, anything you do for two years feels like the foundation for a routine.

I felt enormously proud of them last year. I mean, it’s sort of no big deal. You take them to the Unaccompanied Minors Lounge, the people behind the counter put the minors’ passports and documentation in plastic folders and then, when the time comes to leave, they take them through the fast track lanes of immigration. The minors make the long, boring trip, get off at the other end and get taken through the fast track lanes of immigration and customs before they’re deposited with the people we’ve authorised to collect them.

The lads took it all in their stride this year, just as they did last. I guess I would have preferred it if they’d looked back – even a glance – to give one final wave to those of us standing behind the rope at the ‘Passengers Only Beyond This Point’ point. But more I was struck by the idea that I’d made children who could do this thing. Travel half way around the world with just each other. It’s so very far from the life that the mister and I had as children. And yet, it’s exactly the same. Visiting your granny at school holiday time, thinking not even one bit of the parents you’ve left behind.

I wanted to tell you more about it, but the time has flown and I need to get off to work. And pressing publish, that’s how blogs stay alive.