Airports make me strangely emotional. Not airport security. There is very little poetry in removing one’s shoes beside a plastic bin. I mean airports as places. They contain an extraordinary amount of human feeling for buildings designed primarily around moving luggage. Every few feet, someone is leaving someone. Or coming back. A family is standing at arrivals staring through the doors. A man is checking his watch every thirty seconds. A child is holding a handmade sign. Someone is trying not to cry at a gate. Someone else is running because apparently every romantic comedy taught us that important emotional decisions should be made after boarding has commenced.
Airports are full of beginnings and endings. Perhaps that’s why they feel cinematic. Most ordinary places contain people in the middle of their lives. Airports catch them at transitions. I love watching arrivals. Departures are sadder. Arrivals contain possibility. The doors open. People emerge. For several seconds, each traveler scans the crowd. Then someone sees someone. The face changes. That’s the moment. I could watch it all day. People reveal themselves when someone they love comes home. The sophisticated businessman becomes a boy for half a second when he sees his daughter. The composed woman drops her bag and runs. Dogs completely abandon dignity. There are hugs where you can tell immediately how long the people have been apart. Three days. Friendly hug. Three months. Serious hug. A year? Nobody is letting go anytime soon. I find reunions incredibly romantic. Maybe even more romantic than first meetings. A first meeting contains fantasy. A reunion contains evidence. You already know the person. And you missed them. That matters. There is something wonderful about being expected. You land, turn on your phone, and see: “I’m downstairs.” Four extremely sexy letters: H-E-R-E. Especially after a long flight. Someone came. Someone tracked the arrival time. Someone is waiting. Perhaps this sounds trivial. I don’t think it is. Showing up is one of the great romantic gestures. Not flowers. Not speeches. Presence. I am here. I said I would be. You look terrible after nine hours on an airplane and I am still delighted to see you. That is love. Or at least excellent affection.
Air travel itself is not terribly romantic anymore. We should be honest. The golden age involved glamorous photographs of elegantly dressed people drinking cocktails on airplanes. The photographs generally omit delays, turbulence, cigarette smoke and the fact that aviation used to be considerably more dangerous. Nostalgia is an aggressive editor. Still, flying retains magic if you think about it for more than five seconds. We complain that the Wi-Fi is slow while sitting in a chair seven miles above the earth traveling hundreds of miles an hour. Humans are difficult to impress. Look out the window. You are above the clouds. This would have been mythology for most of human history. Now someone is annoyed because the movie selection is disappointing. I love the moment of takeoff. The engines increase. The runway accelerates beneath you. Then suddenly the earth releases the airplane. Buildings shrink. Roads become lines. Entire neighborhoods become patterns. Within minutes, all the problems that felt enormous on the ground become invisible. Perspective can be literal. I often think this when flying away from a city. Everything continues without you. The traffic moves. People go to dinner. Lights turn on in apartments. Somewhere down there, someone is having the worst day of his life. Someone else is having the best. And from above, it is all just light. There is something comforting about that. Travel reminds us we are important and unimportant simultaneously. Our lives matter enormously to us and to the people who love us. The universe remains strangely calm about the entire situation. I think both truths are useful. Airports are also places where identity becomes temporarily suspended. You’re between worlds. You have left one version of your life and haven’t yet entered the next. Nobody expects much from you except eventually finding the correct gate. I like this liminal state. You can sit at an airport bar at an hour when drinking wine would seem questionable anywhere else. Time zones provide legal counsel. You can eat breakfast for dinner. Dinner for breakfast. Buy a book you will probably never finish. Spend twelve dollars on water and briefly reconsider capitalism. Everybody is temporarily homeless. First class and economy eventually meet at baggage claim. Some luggage simply arrives with greater self-esteem.
Then there are airport goodbyes. I dislike them. Especially the good ones. The longer you stand there, the harder it becomes to leave. Eventually one person says, “Okay.” Nobody means okay. Another hug. A kiss. “Text me when you land.” That sentence is love disguised as logistics. Text me when you land. Tell me the aircraft carried you safely through the sky. Tell me you arrived in the world where I am not. I will sleep better knowing. What a tender little human thing. Maybe airports make me emotional because travel compresses relationships into visible moments. At home, affection can hide inside routine. Making coffee. Picking something up at the store. Sleeping beside someone. At an airport, the separation makes the attachment obvious. You are leaving. I don’t want you to. You are returning. I am happy. Simple.
And I suppose travel itself has always contained romance for me. The possibility that life could look different somewhere else. A hotel key. A foreign street. Dinner in a city where nobody knows you. The person beside you becoming your only familiar thing. Travel intensifies companionship because everything else is unfamiliar. Maybe that’s why some trips stay lodged in memory long after ordinary weeks disappear. You remember the hotel. The weather. The airport. The taxi. The first view from the room. What he was wearing. What you ate. Where he kissed you. Memory likes novelty. Love likes it too. So yes, airports make me emotional. I still dislike lines. I still become irrational when someone blocks the moving walkway. We are not animals. Stand to the right. But beneath the inconvenience, airports remain strangely beautiful to me. Thousands of people arriving. Thousands leaving. Everybody carrying something. Suitcases, certainly. But also expectations. Relief. Nervousness. Grief. Excitement. Someone they miss. Someone they’re about to meet. And every few minutes, somewhere near arrivals, those automatic doors open—and somebody’s whole face lights up.