airport observational free writing...

I am one of those people who cries in airports. There are few socially acceptable public places to cry, but airports are okay. I am not, however, one of those beautiful romantic poet criers leaving behind true love. I am the sopping, bleary-eyed, sniffling kind that people ignore and then feel sorry for themselves.

I choose to walk between terminals rather than take the train. I have time. I need to burn the energy and emotion. Businessmen look away from my tears, which somehow makes me laugh.

Hemingway is perfect airport reading.

A man limps past me, waiting at the gate for one of those electric transports driven by charming black men to take him and his artificial leg to the next gate. He stops the new recruits wearing army t-shirts and tells them how he lost his leg in a roadside bomb in Iraq. They're heading to boot camp and he's on his way home from an event in New York honoring soldiers injured in battle. Now he works for the government helping disabled soldiers integrate back into society. He reassures them, but it's unnecessary. They are confident and cocky and have never faced death like that. I say a prayer for Mark and Joe and Jake and all the other names I don't know. I smile, but feel like crying for them now and not for me. Instead I tell him thank you when he looks over at me, writing, and smile at the tattooed boys my own age.
"You're welcome."
"Don't be scared, learn everything they teach you, don't be scared," he says again. They don't know fear yet. I hope Hemingway writes about them standing, not laid out flat against a block wall, defeated.
The cart arrives as the automatic trash compacter runs noisily next to me. The boys start to walk towards B-27 and past the fat Jewish boy and his father. Another generation that will have to learn fear.
The wounded soldier in his business suit smiles and waves at me and rides away. The uniformed lady announces my boarding group. I stuff my journal and my Hemingway into my red backpack and board the plane.
I have a new reason to cry in airports.