First Class from Boston

Whenever I'm in airports, I tend to do the same things. Sometimes I'll wander around aimlessly, looking people, at things, at the design and structure of the terminal. Sometimes I'm noticing things familiar, I go almost on autopilot because I've been there so many times, although, no matter how I try when I'm in my frequented airports, I never can remember which gates I've left from. The numbers are meaningless, save for the one I must find if I'm ever going to get to where I need to go, or where I'm supposed to go. Sometimes I'm looking for food in the brief time I have during a layover. I never want to just stop in the fast food lines with the quick and greasey psuedo-food. Instead I always end up finding a sushi restaurant and convincing myself that, even though a lite meal here is expensive, my per diem for my meal is twice that. I always end up feeling remorseful, though, since nine times out of ten I've already felt I've spent too much of the PC(USA)'s money on a trip that I don't feel I've really committed myself to. When I have a lot of free time, I wander in and out of interesting looking shops. Today I'm in Detroit, so I already know there's nothing really of interest. A month ago, though, I was in Salt Lake City. I walked past art from all sectors, unique turns of the concourse, interesting architerture, innovatively designed shops, carvings of bears, fountains, and a great store that sold recycled novelties. There were purses and cd holders made of license plates, coasters made from the inner parts of old records, unique wire sculptures, and bottle cap, belt-buckle belts. A Russian sales-lady asks me if I have children because I'm looking at everything, including the potentially-recycled material Beanie Baby rip-offs on a shelf. I start to wonder if this is all really a recycling endeavor, or just a novel idea and money driven scheme, since everything except for the coasters and buttons are far too pricey for my wallet. The woman continues to talk to me about children and what will happen when I have them, how they will act, how I will feel, as if she knows, as if she thinks I'm ever going to have them. Every once in a while, I'm running like mad, or at least like crazy since I must look so awkward to the people around me. I'm always lugging my huge tote with my heavy laptop, documents for the trip like googlemap directions, Enterprise confirmation numbers and the three pounds of Splenda packets I've stolen from various Starbucks and Peet's coffees. So I always lean to one side and more bounce than I do run. My pants always seem to be falling off me and I can only imagine my fellow people-watchers are silently thinking, "there goes another one, poor kid." No matter what, even if I'm in a jog, I'm always shopping. Not necessarily the stores, but the gates. I guess that's why I don't remember gate numbers, because I'm busy looking at the destinations. It seems like it would be so easy to jump on any one of them, just pick a destination and take off. Today I could go to West Palm Beach, Florida. There are three terminals going to Chicago now, I could even pick which airport. Cities keep jumping out at me and I can hear commercials and advertisements with their cheery voices trying to tell me how great the midwest or New England is this time of year. And they're always using that old pharse "get away". The terminals always seem to sense my mood (or maybe it's the other way around and I just notice what I want) because there's always a theme to my choices for the day. Sometimes they're fantastic vacation getaways like Maui or Vegas, beaches and those types of trips they give away on games shows. Sometimes they're stops of Americana, and sometimes there's a flight to every place I love and every place I miss (A23 flight to Asheville, A30 flight to RDU, A34 flight to Roanoke, A48 to Greenville-Spartanburg, Charlotte, Atlanta...). I start to imagine flights to Montreat, to Chapel Hill, to Avery Co., to Clinton, places they could never go, but anywhere but here.

Today I decide on Starbucks, against my better judgement. I order a decaf, tall, sugar free, soy, no whip mocha and sit next to a large, metallic flower pot with a tree rising from it. The spot is quaint. I watch the people around. The nice guy doing work, his mole skin journal sitting idly beside him. Theres's the charicatured old man with the thick eyebrows that are only connected at the bridge of his nose and curve up into a crotchity V. A couple sits and reads together, she's laying down, curled up next to his lap while he sits turned away. Another couple shares one of the large seats in the waiting area, noticeably people watching themselves. The girl next to me answers her cell phone. I can tell it's a boyfriend from her face and the way she says, "What are you doing?" Coy and airy. Is she really recounting what she had for lunch? Could that be the superficiality of her conversation? They're separated by a distance that requires air travel, why aren't they talking about things that matter, about who each other are? Or is that the way you're supposed to talk? I don't even know. I would probably talk about the game last night. What Boston was like, the movie I saw with a friend. I'd want to talk about a lot of things on my mind that would probably never come up. I'd just be waiting to be asked. Maybe this couple is on their way out, or maybe they're in love and lasting. There are actual birds flying around the trees, leaving their marks on the shiny pot. I wonder if I had gotten a bagle at the 'bucks if I could get one to come eat out of my hand. But that never happens. I depressingly wonder if one has been smashed by the windshield of the open rail shuttle that travels above the concourse. I certainly hope they know better and stay away from that train and anyone who might ride it. Inside the tree pot are rocks. About half of them are decorated with little notes saying things like "I'm off to Alabama!" or "Through me" (which I'm at first certain means 'throw', but I can't be sure), Lee and Corey with a heart, Sundae and Sparkey, Lexettes Rock, one that says "I was here", a powerful statement that says to me that they want to be known and heard and maybe they left it for us all, little scribble drawings, a man made of a countinous, wandering line. They're all like little Post Secrets, left sitting to commemorate a brief stay in Detroit, anxious or excited feelings before a flight, or apparently love. I wonder if they remember they're even here.

I've been left to wonder about the people in airports. It amazing and almost heartbreaking to know that so many people are in an airport, especially one this size, at any particular moment. And they're doing the things that I'm doing. At least some of them. Some are having different experiences that I can't have. They're flying with their families, or they're friends, or teams. Some are working. They come in here every day and wait patiently on the transients for a good eight hours and leave. It's so striking to think about all the lives that pass through here daily. At any one moment you can look up and see so many people walking the concourse, going who knows where. Is it an exciting destination today? A vacation? A work trip? Are they actually getting to go to one of those places they love? Or are they having to leave it? So many lives you brush by with stories and feelings and elations and hurts, just wandering by. They'll never get to know each other, they'll never get to know me. I'm always left to wonder if there's one person in this airport who could be a friend, or a soulmate. And if you don't trust in fate, in divine providence or intervention, then whenever you're in an airport, it's nothing but hours and thousands of missed chances.

Airports have been both a curse and a saving grace for me these past six months. At first they were a saving grace. I was getting time to myself, time to think, time to reflect, to watch people, to enjoy life. Now I dread them. I can't help but feel both surrounded and alone. Alone with my thoughts, which have been too many and too loud these days, and I'm forced to stay in my head. I've been so stressed out lately. With all the changes going on in world mission, I feel like I've been one of the people left straddling where I want to be and where I am. I've had to deal with the stress of everyone above me, having to shoulder the hurt feelings and be sensitive to transition. I've been put in a horrible place between an us vs. them war of the interns and my supervisors, who happen to be my friends. And of course I've chosen the path of speaking my mind and fighting for what I think is right, rather than travel the easy route of submission. Finance issues have suddenly crept out of nowhere, or at least seemed to. My roomate is passively-aggressively hating me, or is that just in my head? I've started to hate travelling and it's all I get to do. Sometimes I get lucky and I get to visit a friend. The time is always grand, provided they're free, but I always have to leave them to their busy lives and go back to Louisville when the time is over. Instead of feeling these days like I'm getting to visit people, I'm just left feeling like I've spent the past six months leaving people.

And I wonder if I'd still feel that way if it weren't for airports. Sometimes the antagonist isn't what or who you think it is. Sometimes it's something you haven't even explored yet. I think really, when it comes down to it, what's made me sad these days is the security checkpoint. Because no matter how many people I see, dropping off their loved ones, the ones who turn back in front of me in the line to keep glancing at their wife who's still waiting until she can't see him anymore, the little boy who's crying for his mother as she gets into the security line without him, the lover who is making a huge display of kissing their air traveler in a lingering way, there's no one there saying goodbye to me. And when I see all the people waiting just on the other side of security for arrivals, I don't bother to look because no one's waiting for me there either.

The only time I ever had anyone say goodbye or meet me off the plane was when I went to the Philippines. It's put this weird desire in my head to fly internationally again, just for the tough goodbye and the grand welcome home. Almost like Jack on LOST. I keep flying in hopes that I'll get back to something.

But I know someday it'll happen again. Or at least that soon I'll be able to stop flying.