The door to the jet way hissed
open, and the rush of humidity overwhelmed me, almost as if someone forced me
to breathe from a fire hose. Instantly, the desert-accustomed pores of my skin
oversaturated themselves, and I began to sweat profusely, my T-shirt clinging
to my body. I sighed with exhaustion.
It had been an eternal flight.
Originating in Salt Lake City at 10:30 the night before, I hit Denver an hour
after all the airport restaurants had closed. Hungry, eyes too bleary for
reading, I paced the length of the terminals until just after midnight, when I
boarded the flight to Atlanta. I was stuck for the next three and a half hours
next to a couple who continually sucked face. They kept the duty free liquor
running until they passed out midflight; that’s when I added this
experience to the list of hellish episodes I had endured over the summer.
Unfortunately for me, I can’t sleep when I fly. I was able to catch a short nap and
a small bit of breakfast in the Hartsford-Jackson International Airport before
boarding the small jet for the last seventy-five minute leg of the journey into
Wilmington.
I mechanically retrieved my
luggage from the overhead compartment and shuffled down the blue-carpeted aisle
toward the door of the airplane. “Never again,” I swore to myself, “will I fly
red-eye. It’s not worth the price difference.”
The passenger terminal hummed
like a swarm of worker bees, bustling here and there, trying to catch
connections, answering the perpetual buzz of their cell phones, moving without
thought—just instinct—toward the next destination. The smell of overpriced
under-flavored coffee and over-perfumed, under-deodorized travelers hung
suspended in the North Carolina humidity.
The trek to the baggage claim
seemed an obstacle course fraught with runaway luggage, unattended children,
and more janitorial carts and cones than I saw actual custodial workers. In the
grand activity of the airport, I was small—a feeling I had come to recognize
more and more that summer.
It started in June as my wife
and I drove across the country—from Utah to the east coast of North
Carolina—almost 2300 miles with four kids in a van. Sariah was six, Zac was
four, Ally was two, and Brooklyn was about eight weeks old. Let that sink in.
Truth be told, the drive out was fairly uneventful other than an unplanned
screaming fit just outside Vail, Colorado.
Two days after arriving at Amy’s
parents’ house, I flew back to Utah to begin a semester on campus at Utah State
University. It was one of the requirements for my Master’s Degree to spend a
certain amount of time face to face with professors. So I lived in my friend’s
mother-in-law apartment, a clean but shabby one-room deal with a small kitchen
and bathroom detached from the main house. My friend and her husband were away
on a cross-country Harley trip for most of the five weeks I was up there. I
really didn't know anyone in my program, as I had taken all of my other classes
online at a distance site. I did have a few friends who lived in Logan, but
most of them went away for the summer. There was no one to keep me company
except for the spiders and box elder bugs.
That was probably a good thing,
though, since I lived at the library every day until it closed at 5:30. My days
were filled with six hours of class: Reading Assessment and Intervention,
Content Area Reading and Writing, and Advanced Reading Comprehension, so there
was at least six more hours of homework and research and writing every night. I
had no time for anything else. On a rare occasion, I actually sat down for a
meal. I couldn't have been lonelier if I sequestered myself in some remote
shack like a tree-hugging hermit in the Uintahs.
Sure, I had a phone and could
talk to my family every so often, but the isolation drove me crazy. Sometimes I
would sit in the park to read a textbook and watch random kids playing just so
I could have the noise and laughter I was accustomed to. Then, after all the
moms began giving me death stares and stink eyes, I felt like some sort of
weird creeper and slinked home to study by myself again.
Even doing normal things like
watching baseball on TV or strolling through Logan’s small zoo and parks didn't
really do anything for me. I even tried going to the movies by myself, an act I
had never before committed. Talk about a weird experience. I swear I will never
do it again. Creeper.
In short, I got lost in the
shuffle of a life that didn't really know me, and I didn't really fit in.
Emptiness is probably the best way to describe it. I was nothing more than a
drone: wake up. Go to class. Study. Go to bed. Repeat. I began to really feel
for society’s outsiders. This time, though, I was the ignored pariah. I hate to
even admit it, but I really wondered if I even mattered. My family, the ones I
loved, were being taken care of two time zones away; they were just fine
without me. In fact, they were having a blast at the beach and everywhere else
Grandma and Grandpa took them. All this, while I struggled as an academic
automaton, trying to put a few different letters after my name: M.Ed.
As I traversed the country back
toward my family after the summer term ended, I wondered if the sacrifice was worth it. The loneliness I
experienced as I drifted through the seas of strangers in airports didn't help
my self-pity party either. I was a walking statistic with a paid ticket,
nothing more. Tired, disheveled, I made my way slowly to collect my bags.
As I passed through one sliding
glass door, I heard a battle cry that saved my life. “Daddy!” I looked up to
spy Amy pushing a stroller through the airport doors, the other three kids
racing toward me. A dad-seeking missile named Zac slammed into my legs, buried
his face in my belly, and squeezed for all he was worth. Ally, leaving Sariah
in the dust, raced in next and locked her arms around my leg. As if I were
wading through quicksand, I forced myself forward, kids still attached, toward
a halting Sariah. Even though she isn't the most affectionate, she still hugged
me and whispered, “I missed you, Dad,” like only she could.
Preventing the trickle of tears
was futile. It was a few minutes before any of the three would let go so I
could get to Amy. I guess there were a few people in the world who needed me.
And to top it off, little Brooklyn, who had almost doubled her age since I had
seen her, still recognized her daddy.
