April, 2006:

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Airports are filled with people who have a purpose.  Its not the type of place many people go to just for something to do, although after being here today I would consider coming again for the sole purpose of writing more character sketches.  People are arriving and departing, but those of us who spend the most time here are waiting… waiting for the arrivals and departures to do just that – arrive and depart.  The ones arriving are starving for a cigarette, anxious to find a cab, and ready to do the business they came to do.  The ones departing are checking and rechecking the flight numbers on their tickets and matching that information to what’s on the screens overhead.
 
Those of us waiting for an arrival are talking about what we ate for breakfast and lunch – topics that will inevitably change when the one(s) for whom we wait finally arrive.  When they do its on to "Oh my God!" and "How are you?"  Tears are always saved for the departure at the other end of the visit – if it’s a two-way flight.

Awaiting a departure is a different story.  Some wait alone, and many are business types who have probably done this a hundred times before and don’t think much of it.  But there are others who wait together, family clusters of two’s and four’s who are about to be separated and their distress is palpable.  When the departing member final walks onto the plane and out of site, those remaining walk slowly back to the parking lot and drive away – sadder and more alone.
 
That sultry Chris Isaak song is wafting through the terminal.  I think its called "Wicked Game" and unless you’re a REALLY slow reader you’re listening to it right now… As the fat, balding middle aged men wait for their luggage to slide on the carrousel, there is no poetic appropriateness to that song playing, but I can see a video for it made in slow motion in an airport with people walking in all directions. 

I wonder if those here on business will recover what they’ve sacrificed to be loaded onto a flight to come to this small city.  The most recent flight arrival yielded a bumper crop of young-to-middle-aged men.  Guys in tweed jackets that seem happy with their lives; younger guys in casual-but-still-serious business suits who still want more of whatever it is their getting right now.  Scattered amongst these common types are the rare out-doorsy looking 50-year-olds and the red-faced 35-year-old alcoholics.  Most of all these men arrive alone, wait for their luggage alone, and leave alone.  If this is their return home, they must lead lonely lives.
 
One man is lucky enough to have his daughter here to meet him but there is tension between them and she’s largely ignored by him -and he by her.  She’s more concerned with the text messages on her cell, but I doubt she would be if her father was showing an interest in her.  She strikes me as the type that is a marginal high-school athlete and is more concerned with the elevated social status being on the team affords than she is about doing well on that team.  Its the hoodie that says "GIRLS BASKETBALL" in Rockwell type that’s important – you see, it says something about her identity.

I make these observations about someone I really know nothing about.  Its all conjecture based on other girls I’ve know who look the same and I think I’ve got her pegged, but I’ve been wrong before.  Its still fun to write a character sketch about someone you don’t know based solely on their physical appearance and body language.  Besides, by now everyone must know that first impressions are almost everything and so I take whatever I see first as a person’s manifesto.  This is either shallow or efficient on my part – or maybe a bit of both.

More people waiting, men shaking hands, exchanging forced salutary chuckles, walking out into the night through a rotating door.  The handshakes, the chuckles – they’re supposed to convey self-confidence and draw attention.  It works, but they leave, and those of us left waiting are left to find a new object of observation and to periodically turn our gaze toward the domestic arrivals door, looking for that familiar face we came here to pick up.