The Family

The two dolls chatted as the six-year-old girl looked on. Different dolls they've got these days. The two Barbie-esque dolls sported little clothing, and a professional tan. Entirely immersed in her imaginary world, she reposed on the floor, in the departures lounge of Christchurch airport. Her four-year-old sister ran restlessly here and there, climbing up onto one of the blue chairs and then complaining about something, perhaps that her sister was playing with dolls, and she wasn't. Something small like that, like little children do. Early forties and grey hair balding, Dad sat, all but dead to the activity around him, filling out slips of paper and slotting them into the passports for each member of his family. Mum leaned back in her chair, nodding occasionally at her youngest daughter, enjoying her few moments of relative rest. It's not everyday you see the dad organising stuff. The two matching backpacks lay on the ground, and it appeared that each of these was full of dolls and a blanket.

Mum got up and walked the few paces into the center of the lounge to throw something in the rubbish-bin. The youngest girl followed, and in the long, drawn-out fashion well-known by mums all around the world, informed her mother and the everyone else in the room, that she “needed a drink”. “I'm thirsty Mum”, she complained. Despite her desperate, heart-rending plea, her mother patted the child on the head as she walked back to her seat. Dad was still busily writing away, the very epitome of orderliness.

Muffled words came over the loud-speaker, would passengers in seats thirty to eleven please board now. Mum and the two girls got out of their seats, the girls crouching down, and Mum crouching down behind them, pointing over their shoulders at something interesting at the back of the room. What are they looking at? A middle-aged flight-attendant was walking up the high-durability carpet towards their end of the room. Big sister skipped off to play with her dolls again as Mum had a word with the four-year-old. “When we get on the plane, people aren't going to be very happy if you're screaming”, she warned her.

Back at the seats now, Dad wrapping up his task, and Mum pulled Teddy from out of one of the bags. Moth-eaten and thread-bare, patches of fur missing, the large pink teddy-bear was hardly brand-new. Head and limbs coming off with just the string inside holding them all in one piece. Masterpiece. Dad stacked up the passports and dropped his parker into his shirt pocket. Mum ensured that the girls had all their dolls and blankets tucked into their backpacks. The girls had a brief discourse over whose backpack was whose. The family was mobilised, and with mum and dad in the lead, the two girls took up the rear-guard as they headed for gate 19, somewhere behind those postered room-dividers. Teddy held on tight to the little hand of the four-year-old girl, and as the family disappeared around the corner, waved me goodbye.