Airport

I took Matt to the airport tonight. As he prepared to board his plane, I stood on the non-passenger side of the glass. I could see him and everyone else waiting at the gates to board their planes. Most looked like business travelers with a few vacationers tossed in here and there. I used to love going to the airport. In high school, some of my friends and I would hang out there, watching people and wondering where they were going. I always wanted to be that person, walking quickly through the terminal, pulling the suitcase with one hand and gripping the boarding pass with the other. I wanted to be on the other side of the glass.

Just as I was getting ready to leave, I looked over at the security check area and saw a bag come through the x-ray machine. It looked just like one I have. I stared at it, wondering whom it belonged to. What was her story? Where was she going? And suddenly I wondered if she was my sort of alter ego. Straight out of a movie, the bag was in fact mine, but it was being carried by a different version of myself—the one who had made different choices that brought us to this exact same location, but her decisions landed her on the inside of the glass. I stood there anticipating what this other-version looked like. Surely she would be taller and thinner, sporting something other than a long-sleeved t-shirt that smells of spit up.

Finally she stepped into my view…along with her three kids. This short, average-built woman in casual wear grabbed the luggage, dispersing it among the kids, trying to move out of the area as quickly as possible. She was not who I had anticipated seeing—not the cool, calm, collected professional. As she grabbed that bag—my bag—I turned to leave. She was on the other side of the glass, but she was more familiar than I had anticipated…perhaps more so than I want to admit at times. As I headed home to the kids, the laundry, the dirty dishes, I thought that perhaps instead of an alter ego, just one version of myself exists. It’s just that at times, I still don’t recognize who that is.