Reflections on a childhood reunion

The mantle that fell on us

The weekend past provided a moment of deep reflection on the quality of relationships and how they endure. In other ways, I thought about how a generational mantle of favour covers us in certain places out of reverence for what our forebears have done long before we became part of the scene. The ability to understand that grace which is not of our ability or achievement is something to reckon with.

I can say I have benefited immensely from much of what my parents have done and the enduring relationships that have grown from those communities. Social media and the wonders of modern communication abstracts from the reality of sight, sound, touch, and hearing in terms of physicality. The convenience tends towards the substitute.

Then back together again

How I felt about seeing relations and friends who I had not seen from about 7 years ago was heart-warming, the catching up and the memories that linger. You feel you have adapted and changed and still much remains the same. What is evident is the mutual love and affection we have for each other, whatever the trajectories of life, what brings us together is strong, enduring, and wholesome.

Further on, there are people I had not seen since the 1980s, and we were gathered to celebrate a landmark birthday with all the siblings of the celebrant coming from the far ends of the world for the festivities. The matriarch, the widow of my father’s closest, best, and childhood friend presided over ensuring I graced the occasion. My arrival indicated much of my features are too easy to recognise, even as I scan the deep recesses of my archives to link and appreciate.

The childhoods that sired this

The greetings and the smiles, I have not attended a Nigerian fare for longer than I can care to remember, we are counting decades and more. In any case, I was being introduced to the new generation to which the reference point was the close friendship of my father to their dearly departed grandfather.

The party managers having marshalled us to the organised settings, I looked up again to recognise another childhood friend, scion of the community of childhood friends of my father. Then he introduced his wife to me, my father had given the eulogy at his father's funeral. That was news to me, that his father had passed on, along with the additional detail.

It occurred to me as it has before that with the blessing of a long life comes the misery of bidding your peers fond farewells with the reminiscing in sadness and warm feelings. The traction of time is perpetual, and our marks in the notches of time’s unending length of totem pole is where we look to reflect on the things that suggest, we need people to gather again for old times sake.

The Terminal

We caught up in Frankfurt after 27 years.

The Learning

Almost a fortnight ago, in the midst of the media frenzy that accompanied a blog written about me, I heard from my sister that she was about to travel to the United States. I congratulated her as she admonished me for allowing the public spectacle that followed my story.

In very stark terms, I made it clear that the decision was mine to make and the consequences, whatever they might be, were challenges to be faced as they came, all considerations taken on board.

The exchange was a bit terse but friendly, and I basically kept a low profile after that. On the Saturday following, we were in a bit of a quandary; travel agents in Nigeria were angling for their commissions at the expense of getting an affordable flight ticket. As the hours went by, the prices of the tickets were rising such that they were becoming unaffordable.

Airport choices

Meanwhile, a useful app that could provide an insider's view of flight scheduling and pricing, OnTheFly, was not available in Nigeria. I did consider transferring my frequent flyer miles to her, but there were limitations to the number of miles I could give away, and there were other restrictions on buying tickets on behalf of others outside Europe.

Her first choice would have involved a 26-hour stopover in Doha; the question then arose about what to do with a long layover at the airport if you did not have a visa to exit the terminal. The Doha Hamad International Airport has quiet rooms for a limited time at a cost. All looked tentative.

There were options for a stopover in Istanbul via Turkish Airlines, and were it not for the strictures of time, flying out of Cotonou, Benin or Lomé, Togo would have shaved almost a third off the cost of the ticket.

Trigger response

Apart from a contribution, all I could do was hope and wait for the best. As dusk approached, I received news that a flight had been booked on her behalf from the US and there was a 10-hour stopover in Frankfurt; she was flying with Lufthansa.

I didn't give it any thought when I learnt of this development, but once I told her, it dawned on me: if she were coming through Europe, I would see her. Europe is my backyard, so to speak, and so I got into planning my trip.

I requested her full itinerary, from which I could determine what terminal she would be flying into and whether she implicitly had a transit visa to stop over in Frankfurt, considering she did not have a Schengen visa (SchengenVisaInfo.com). [A lowly company apparatchik sent me an email 8 years after writing this blog to update the text reference from Schengen Visa to what it is now. Most such requests I usually ignore.]

Then I had to determine if I could traverse terminals in the airport without having to go through immigration. Having a US visa implicitly gave her transit rights through Frankfurt Airport.

Terminal woes

On my side, I normally use SkyTeam flights, but that would have landed me in the Schengen immigration control area, leaving Manchester with stopovers in either Amsterdam or Paris. The only way I could avoid this was to fly directly from a non-Schengen Area UK to Frankfurt; it meant changing airline alliances to fly Lufthansa.

Other domestic issues required me to return on the same day rather than extend my stay through the weekend as I might have done in other circumstances.

Fortuitously, I asked for the day off, booked my ticket to arrive in Frankfurt at 9:15 AM and depart at 9:45 PM, which meant I could print out both boarding passes double-sided for my outward and return journeys.

My sister would have arrived in Frankfurt at the same terminal just under 3 hours before I did. When I arrived in Frankfurt, I was told to go to the Z gates, having arrived at the B gates of Terminal 1. I boarded the SkyTrain that linked the gates and found myself at a security checkpoint.

Sheer luck

On tendering my boarding pass, after some hesitation, the teller noted that my departure would be from a Z gate. I didn't even know that, not to mention my being 12 hours early for my departure. I was let through.

I made it to the Z gates and determined my sister would leave from gate Z15. I had not seen her Facebook message, and posted an announcement to have her meet me at gate Z15. I did a quick scout around the gate without seeing her, and as the announcement went out on the tannoy, I waited at the gate whilst scanning my Facebook messages.

The reunion

'I am waiting in front of gate Z15, where are you?' I wrote. I stood looking around like a meerkat sentry. She appeared from the thick of the crowd: my sister, whom I last saw almost 27 years before. All the while, I had been unsure of how emotional I would be; there were no tears, just lots of hugging, and I was very happy.

There would have been much to catch up on, but we decided to cherish the moment instead. My other sister responded negatively from Nigeria on Facebook that she was not the one who was supposed to be meeting. Yes, we have pranksters a-plenty in the family.

We called home, had a meal, took some pictures, found a place to recline and catch a nap, and spent almost 8 hours together before I watched her board her plane and depart for the United States. By the time that was done, I checked to confirm my boarding gate; it had been changed to the B gates. What luck.

Traipsing through another security check, a couple of hours in the lounge, I was back home just before 11:00 PM. It was such an emotionally charged day that I took Friday off. Mission accomplished by the accident of fortune and the blessing of opportunity and means.

I've wanted to write this blog for days.