Airports are between one place and another; they aren’t the place you’re leaving. and they are not the place you are going to be. Passing through an airport makes you already miss the place you’ve left and positively relieved to reach your destination. Leaving the airport feels so damn good that it often makes me cry.
When I had planned for my trip to Washington DC to attend my young friend Leila’s bat mitzvah, I bought myself a ticket on the last Boston flight out on Sunday night. I had made many early morning dashes to the airport, and I decided that I would rather spend Sunday with my friends. After the services, after rushing around to make ready for the party, after the party, I wanted a lazy Sunday with my very dear friends. On Sunday, we started with a big restaurant brunch, ate slabs of leftover cake in the afternoon and finished with Asian noodle soup on our way to the airport. We talked and laughed. I missed my family, but I didn’t want them with me, not for those short days.
Driving to the airport on Sunday night, I knew it was time to come home. Didn’t want to be in the airport the plane , not even the taxi heading for Somerville would do.
At the baggage-check counter, they asked for my ID, and I flashed the empty wallet-window where it should have been. As I tore fruitlessly though my carry-on bag, I heard Jamie’s voice inside my head: “Sweetie, I’m putting your ID in the pocket of your jacket. Just keep it there; that way you’ll know exactly where it is.” I surely did know where it was, it was in the pocket of a jacket hanging over the back of Marguerite’s kitchen table. When I called, she told me that she was dispatching her husband Gary, the one living person as forgetful as I was, to the airport with my jacket. If he couldn’t get the card to me before I missed the plane, his instructions were to scoop me up, stop at the pharmacy for my medication, and bundle me back to Clifton VA.
On our last trip to VA, Emma left her stuffed bunny behind, and I was bringing Bunny home in my carry-on bag. For the next forty minutes, I carried Bunny under my arm as I ran up and down excallators, stood in the Security Check line and sprinted from the shuttle to the gate. Yes, Bun and I got as far as the gate, but we missed the flight by two minutes. The people at the counter sent me off with a stand-by ticket for the first flight out Monday morning.
When Gary and I found one another, I was clutching Bunny around the neck and her fur was all rubbed the wrong way. Once we got back to the house, nobody laughed at me more than I laughed at myself. The couch made a cozy crash pad.
At 5:30 am the next morning I was back in the car. Because I thought I would be home before 9 am, I hadn’t showered. My toothbrush was in Boston along with my fresh underwear. The underwear I’d slept in was stuffed into my bag, and I figured it would serve anyone who searched my bag right if they pulled them out.
UNDERPANTS
As Gary and I drove to the airport, I started making a list of things that should be available in vending machines in the Women’s restrooms in airports.
UNDERPANTS
TOOTHBRUSHES
TOOTHPASTE
FACIAL CLEANSER
MOISTURIZER
PANTYHOSE
MINTS.
Trust me, I’ve spent nt plenty of time in Women’s Restrooms in early-morning airports, and I can tell you that such vending machines would need restocked daily.
Canceling one flight meant that the half-full flight on which I was all but promised was filled to bursting with ticket-holders from the next flight. One fully-booked flight followed another, and I sat in that airport for eleven hours. I listened to my i-pod and ate. I read The Iliad and talked to young men; that last one is an old habit, but one that still entertains, but no more than The Iliad.
By 4 pm, the I-pod was all I could bear, I’d watched two (three?) flights leave without me. I’d busily texted Jamie and Marguerite, always saying that I was bored, but alright.
A friend of mine once observed that airplanes were like buses with wings. As long as a plane had wings, it could carry me home, and that was all that mattered.
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Posted by: David Shaw | June 18, 2009 at 08:54 PM