Airports are peculiar places. People come and go to all sorts of destinations - some exotic and some mundane - with names such as Maui, Oslo and Pittsburgh. My neurotic tendency of being early to important things provided me ample opportunity to study the controlled chaos around me as I waited for my boyfriend to arrive from Oklahoma.
I found it fascinating to watch the people who inhabit the airport. The business travelers, all striving for a look of effortless, unaffected cool. Traveling is nothing new to them; they have their laptops, their briefcases, confident they can go anywhere at the drop of a hat. It's until that crucial flight is delayed that their façade crumbles and indignity rages. The lovers, reunited after how long – a year, a month, a week? It doesn't matter, the embrace is the same – one of desperate longing and happiness. The rest of the airport, the world, us commoners disappear; they see nothing but each other. The family of four, sunburned, coming off an Orlando flight. Mickey Mouse hats and Disney lore adorn their bodies, yet a melancholy air surrounds them. The end of a vacation, end of an era the mom feels. How quickly the time will go by until it is her child who will be going off to college, and will she have to say goodbye like those parents who won't leave until their daughter is completely out of sight? The parents hold hands, watch their daughter go through security, trying to be strong for her sake. The daughter plays cool, anxious she thinks to be rid of her overbearing parents; yet, her last minute turn to wave a final goodbye reveals she and her mom cry the same tears.
The airport seems to be the one place where the rules on emotion in NYC don't apply. People laugh, cry, scream; life does not come to a screeching halt. Maybe it's the anonymity of it all – the transience. No one stays here. I wonder what those around me think when they look at me. Do they see my bated breath, the anticipation I feel as I wait? Do they see me run at first sight? And the next day, do they see my tears? Do they wonder why I cry? I'll never know. At airports, you can never see what others see; you already know your story. You can only look and wonder, how much of it what you see is real and what is just a reflection of you?
