I'll start with an international adoption story. Two years ago, we completed the adoption of Francois, an exquisitely beautiful little girl from Haiti. We picked her out on a trip to a Haitian orphanage when she was six months old. The adoption took a year and a half, so she was about to turn two when we got the word that our flow of emails and letters and phone calls to the U.S. INS offices all over the dang country had FINALLY paid off--they were going to let her into the U.S.A. We left the kids with Grandma and headed out at 3 a.m. to catch a plane.

Fast forward to the airport in Miami on the way home. Finally getting off a packed plane with Francie. When you come from another country, getting off the plane is by no means the end of it. You have to go through INS approval.

In Miami, they've got this glass-walled room where you wait (and wait) for one of the surly guys up front to call your name and perform mysterious acts with paperwork and fingerprinting before they let you leave. It can take quite a while, depending on the crowd. No one in there seems very happy.

One odd thing--there's no bathroom. What, immigrants don't use the bathroom? An airport costs how much to build? And they don't put a bathroom in the INS waiting area? Nope.

Francie needed a diaper change, so I went up front and asked where to go. They directed me back out to the line we came through, which was manned by a good-looking Hispanic guy, looked to be in his 20's, and also to not be someone you'd want to mess with. Handsome Guy directed me back through the waiting lines to the bathrooms, about a quarter-mile away--well, a ways anyhow. "But be sure you come back through this line," he said. "Since I know who you are."

Went to the bathroom, spent quite a while in there. Changing diapers can be time-consuming when traveling, depending on the level of messiness, the need for additional clothing to be changed, and how deep everything is buried in the diaper bag under the sippy cups and paperback books.

When we came out, the lines had all shifted to the far left and a rope had been put up which blocked me from Handsome Guy's former line on the far right. Apparently flights had slowed down and they didn't need all the lines (I guess letting the smaller number of people spread out into shorter lines was not an option). I could see the glass-walled room on the far side of the empty area.

What to do? Well, the guy said to go back through the same line I came through, so, clutching Francie, I ducked under the rope. Took two steps on the other side and six men in suits started toward me, arms raised, shouting "Ma'am!" I froze.

Then I saw Handsome, walking up from the back and waving the other guys down. They backed off (did I imagine their disappointment at not being allowed to shoot anyone?) and he waved me on through. As we went through, he said, "You are lucky I was still here. I was about to go home for the day."

Now, I ask you. Should my ability to use the bathroom REALLY be dependent on the work schedule of an INS agent? What if he had gone home? Would Francie and I have been condemned to live out our lives in the INS lines at the Miami International Airport, surviving on water from the water fountains and little bags of plane pretzels begged from passing travelers?

I don't look like a terrorist. Okay--maybe the terrorists are getting sneaky and hiring chubby middle-aged women with freckles to do their dirty work, but would they really go so far as to send toddlers?

Did you see the Tom Hanks movie, "The Terminal?" Did you think it was an exaggeration? No. As my husband and I watched that movie, we kept going, "Yeah, that's JUST what the INS guys are like."

Francie and I barely escaped eternity in an airport. At least we would have had access to a bathroom.