Airports

I’m sitting in the railway station
Got a ticket for my destination

Currently I am waiting as contentedly as you can imagine by gate 52 at the Edmonton International airport. I intended to check out the duty free shops and scope out the best place to watch reunifications (which make me deliriously happy), but I had to sit down here. Many people who know me wouldn’t question as to why Im sitting in a drafty and loud area of the airport, they would assume that I have some sort of sentimental attachment to this very gate.
Nearly 4 years ago now, Mr.Shannon packed us up for “the long hop across the big pond” and this was the very gate where highly excited grade 12 students huddled together to dream of what we would see in the next two weeks. We grouped together for a big group picture, we taught Kathryn to play “presidents and “janitors”” and tried to refrain from filling my freshly minted travel journal with feelings of trepidation and excitement. That was a long time, but the feelings all came rushing back to me with the familiarity of this gate that I experienced. Much like a song or a voice can bring me back to a certain time and place and make me feel things that have been long buried within my impressive-repressive abilities.
Airports in general remind me of departures that I have missed, of homecomings that I will not be able to be a part of and of the general ebb and flow of relationships that so closely resemble flight plans of planes that I’m daydreaming about right now (corny, I know).
On a happier note, I moved to the arrivals part of the airport and now can creepily watch it as homecoming happens and be able to observe the beauty of a child seeing his mom from afar, of a pretty girl waiting for her significant other to come through the security doors.
Thoughts like these make it hard for me to be mad that I’m overnighting in a strange city, that they have lost my luggage, that I’m not allowed to leave the airport...