On Friday, at two p.m. on the dot I was in Borispol Airport. In my hands I was holding a placard made of two album sheets. One album sheet seemed too small and therefore not reliable. On this poster, rather impressive in its size, in large block letters I wrote Polina Smith and Полина Смис. I was holding the pages proudly high above my head. It didn’t bother me that no one else had such a big poster, as most people just took the sheets torn from a school notebook or notepad, with the name of the person written with a pen or pencil. People, were paying great attention to me and my placard. They came close, looking first at the names written, then at me, some smiling, some snickering, and then stepped aside. Sometimes I saw them pointing to me with their friends, as if I were a lunatic of some kind. I paid no attention to any of those, as my goal was not to miss the courier.
And then I saw him! He was passing through the gate, tired, but happy, smiling with such an innocent smile!
“Mike?”
My hands, holding the banner with my name, dropped down and my “art” fell on the floor with a great wallop.
“Miss, aren’t you meeting a special courier with your documents?” he said.
“I, I am!” I twined my arms about his neck while my body was shaking with laughter. Tears of happiness were rolling down my cheeks and I thought, What a surprise! What a man!
When our mutual emotions piped down a bit, we were approached by a taxi driver, one of many in the airport looking for fares, who offered his services. We refused. But he was in no hurry to leave.
“Excuse me my curiosity,” he said. “Tell me, whom were you meeting here?”
“My husband!” I said happily.
“You needed this huge poster to find your husband?” He was incredibly surprised, and went to tell other the taxi drivers about it. In five minutes I could hear friendly laughter from the drivers’ crowd. In ten minutes, half of Borispol International Airport was laughing. An hour later, I thought, perhaps, all Kiev would be laughing.
Well, I thought as I smiled, let people have their fun.