It is 6:42 A.M. and I am sitting at my departure gate anxiously waiting for my flight to Denver to begin boarding. The $6 yogurt I bought from Starbucks is long gone and I am down to the final dregs of my venti iced brown sugar shaken espresso — light ice because the amount of ice Starbucks puts in their beverages is a scam. Especially at the airport. You want me to pay $10 for a plastic cup filled mostly with ice and a thimble’s worth of coffee? I should think not.
Besides the astronomical price gauging that occurs in these hallowed halls, I don’t mind airports. There is something a little magical about them, don’t you think?
Airports are a melting pot of sorts. Filled with people from an infinite number of places around the world and of all walks of life. People who speak different languages and hold different beliefs. People whose paths would not normally cross, and yet, here they all are.
Everyone together under one roof, on common ground. Everyone at the mercy of the same Travel Gods. Sure, you might be able to buy yourself a better seat on the plane or a spot in the lounge, but no amount of money in the world is going to make a delayed flight take off any sooner. The playing field feels almost level, at least, for a few hours in time.
And speaking of time, is it just me or does it feel like time is suspended while you’re in the airport? Logically, you know the rest of the world is carrying on outside, but you — along with thousands of perfect strangers — are in this land of make believe.
A stretch of time when you are no longer where you were, but not quite where you are going either. You just are where you are for a bit, and there is nothing you can do to speed up the process.
As boarding approaches, my gate area has become quite full. I wonder where everyone is coming from, where they’re going to? The plane is going to Denver, but are they? Is Denver their final destination or is it just another stop along the way?
I assign a story to everyone I see. Entire lives play on warp speed in my mind until I catch up to their present
Take the elderly couple seated across from me with their weathered hands intertwined, heads bowed towards the other as they speak in hushed tones. Their voices are too low for me to hear their words, but they seem excited. I imagine they are traveling to Denver to see their son who moved to Boulder for college with the promise he would move home to Boston in four years, but like many who came before him, he fell in love with the Rockies and never could bring himself to leave. More than twenty years later, he’s still there, only he has a family now – a wife and three kids – and the couple across from me hasn’t seen their grand babies since Christmas and they just can’t wait to squeeze them.
Or look at the sullen teenager sitting a few seats down from me. She’s got her head buried in her phone, on which she is watching videos without headphones, despite the AirPod Maxes circling her neck. This behavior is always obnoxious, but before 7:00 A.M. it should be among the federal offenses the robotic voices warn about in all airports. No unattended luggage. No smoking in the restrooms. No audio without headphones.
Today I am less bothered by it than I usually would be. Something about her face and her posture has me feeling sympathetic. In my mind she is flying back to her mom’s house in Denver – her primary home – after spending the summer with her dad on the East Coast. He took her sailing every weekend and spent too much money on lobster rolls and even let her eat ice cream for dinner some nights — so long as she promised not to mention that in her FaceTimes with her mother.
Or the group of early twenty-somethings standing across from our gate area. They are speaking to each other in what I am pretty sure is Korean with a few English words mixed in. They possess more energy than anyone should before 7:00 A.M., a fact made obvious by the way their laughter carries as they jostle each other playfully. I imagine they are best friends from university on a celebratory graduation trip around the US. They just finished their East Coast leg and are headed West to the Rockies before finishing their grand tour with a trip along the Pacific Coast Highway. They are all trying desperately not to think about the fact that when they return home at the end of September, they will be doing so down a man. One of them will be staying in the States to begin his postgrad life in San Francisco.
On the surface you might think none of these people have anything in common besides the flight number on their boarding pass, but hearing those stories – no matter how fabricated they may be – it makes you think, doesn’t it? Makes you realize that maybe we’re all more alike than different. All united by threads of the love we feel for our people.
For our grand babies and our children and our parents and our friends.
There is something beautiful about any place that allows us to observe these pieces of humanity.
There is something beautiful about airports, no?
XOXO,
Maddie
right? airports are weirdly romantic, endings and beginnings, goodbyes... this place that's kind of an in between. Sometimes I like being in transit, in makes me feel like I can really reflect on things, I don't have anything I should be doing or to do lists to check. loved reading this piece!
most korean americans have been taking 15+ hr flights since we were young so we’re pros 😔✊