At the Airport -- June 9th

So I watched a movie recently that started off with one of the characters was talking about how he loves hanging out at airports because you can look around you at anytime and see real emotion taking place. I couldn’t agree more. So today we flew out of Dulles in Washington DC headed to our layover destination: Dublin, Ireland. Anyway, so we weren’t even in the airport for 15 minutes yet and I see a family, perhaps Chinese, gathered in a corner together. An older woman is trying desperately to hold the hands of everyone else in the group at the same time – all 7 of them. It quickly became apparent that this extended family would not be travelling together… and even I began to tear up. Concurrently, at our ticketing gate, a father (I assume) was travelling alone with his three young daughters. First of all, kudos to him for taking on such an adventure; but you should have SEEN how excited the littlest one was – all decked out in her pink backpack, checking the time every 2 minutes. Airports are havens for raw emotion.

Though I haven’t been able to pin point it yet, I did come across another emotion during our time going through security. Though literally everyone was setting off the metal detectors with hats, belts, and shoes of various types, it was the traditionally dressed Indian woman and her husband who were detained, patted down, and asked to wait inside the glass box for the supervisory TSA workers to do “further identification”. I can’t totally explain it, but it made me uncomfortable; and had they let me, I might have wanted to wait inside the glass box with her, just so she wasn’t alone.

Ok, so we’re going to board the plane now, so here goes nothing! Here’s hoping for some decent food, and a blanket. Oh, and it turns out I left Noah and my sunglasses in the truck. Grr. (For those of you who are unacquainted with “Noah”, that’s my little pillow that I don’t travel without – ever.)

Annndddd…. I may or may not have left my cell phone in the airport shuttle van never to be seen again. Ok, let me be more clear – I DID leave my cell phone in the airport shuttle van never to be seen again. So there you have it. We planned to get new cell phones for NC when we got back anyway… Until then, c’est la vie.