Airports

I love airports.  I get butterflies every time I go to one.  It doesn't matter if I am leaving on a trip or just picking someone up.  I always have the same nervous "Will I get there in time?  Will the flight be on time?  Will I see someone famous?"  I have never seen anyone famous, at an airport or otherwise.  Well, that's not true.  Yick, from Degrassi Junior High, used to be the bartender at the bar I frequented in my 20's. 

Last week, I went to pick up my friend Jenn at the airport.  Ben Gurion airport is an experience.  I arrived at the time the plane was due to land and waited an hour and a half for my friend to deplane, get through customs and immigration and collect her luggage. 

I was so full of excitement I felt like I was going to pee my pants.  Although I think that that had more to do with the fact that I really had to pee but was afraid to use the bathroom in case I missed her exit from the arrivals gate. 

There were hundreds of people arriving.  In an hour and a half.  Hundreds.  And Ben Gurion is an incredible place to watch people arrive.  You have Orthodox Jews, with their black hats and coats, arriving together with their wives and large families, children clinging to their mother's, babies screaming.  You have large tour groups with strange things attached to their clothes, signifying that they belong to the Texas Holyland tours, or some such group.  Camera's slung around their necks as they arrive and stare mercilessly at the Black Hat Jews around them.  Peering as discreetly as they can at the women with colorful scarves on their heads.  Priests and Nuns with their collars and Habits.  Muslims.  It's a truly international crowd.

I saw a family enter the airport from the arrivals gate, with two small children, when suddenly two women in their late 20's went racing towards them, screaming, clutching bouquets of balloons.  The children suddenly grabbed their mother's leg, unsure of what to do with these crazy, screaming women.  I watched this and was overcome with laughter and tears.

Thoughts of visiting my family flooded me.  I imagined my own girls clinging to me as my sisters and mother ran towards me.  But my family doesn't do things like that.  We are more reserved. 

Husbands and wives deplaning, being met by their spouses. 

Watching these reunions, it made me think "I wish my husband was a travelling salesmen or something where he had to travel for work.  We would see each other once a month and I would meet him at the airport, where we would rush into each other's arms and be so happy to see one another.  If he was never home, we would have a great marriage."

I love airports.