On December 21, 1984, in the middle of O’Hare Airport in Chicago, we had a birth in our family.  On that morning, we had allowed far more than enough time to drive through the wind, rain and sleet we encountered on the highway with hundreds of other travelers.  Once inside the terminal, Christmas trees twenty feet tall greeted us like sentinels rising from the holiday crowd.  Each tree had been carefully decked with bows, packages and teddy bears.  People hurried to make connections and everyone appeared to be carrying backpacks, wrapped gifts, skis, or small children.

Even with Christmas in the air, several hours are a long time to wait with children in an airport terminal.  We tried to make the best of it.  Young Jim and his sister Katie, read books they had brought.  Their exhausted Dad, who had been fighting a monster cold for several days, dozed upright on a bench.  Our youngest son, Chris, passed the time by watching planes take off and land outside the glass wall of the terminal.  We grew tired and hungry while a certain Northwest Orient jet from Korea was delayed, and then delayed again.

One by one, the hours trickled by until nightfall when the call came to gather at the arrival gate.  We groaned a few minutes later when yet another delay dashed our hopes.  Nearby, one desperate mom tried to pacify her cranky kids by pumping quarters into a pay television.  When the quarters ran out and the cartoons stopped, the kids fought with each other, thus providing free entertainment for the rest of us.

Another mother had costumed her three children as Christmas gifts in large, decorated cardboard boxes with their arms and legs sticking out.  She had a “Welcome home Daddy” tag attached to each of them.  They ran around bumping into each other as well as into bystanders.  I leaned close to Chris and whispered, “Aren’t you glad we didn’t make you dress up like that?”  A sweet smile of gratitude crossed his face.

Sometime after dark, the long-awaited jet taxied within a few feet of the glass wall where we waited.  Soon, the human Christmas presents welcomed their daddy. Grandparents hugged the grumpy grandchildren and the crowd thinned.  Finally, a slight man climbed off with a round-faced, screaming, dark-haired pink bundle.  I held out may arms, and in the middle of one of the busiest airports in the world, on the busiest weekend of the year, an elderly Korean social worker handed me our youngest child.  She sagged her head against my shoulder and grew still and quiet, just as though she knew she had come home.

I couldn’t see her face because she had slumped against me with her head turned away.  So, instead, I watched the faces of Jim and the children.  Touching her hair, holding her fingers they made a tight circle around us.  “She’s beautiful.  She’s so beautiful,” they whispered.  Time slowed as we stood together in a widening pool of light.  Nearby, an elderly woman tugged on her husband’s sleeve and they stopped at the edge of our circle.  A young man with a pink Mohawk haircut, earrings and black leather vest smiled shyly and then paused.  The light crossed the face of a weary man in a faded green trench coat.  The circle grew while Christmas flooded one crowded corner of the world, touched us all, and changed our lives forever. 

Peace on Earth, good will to all.