The airport aviary
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Sean of the South
Sean Dietrich
I wonder who is watching me right now.
Someone must be watching me because I, too, am watching others. I am in the Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas airport. We are leaving Spain after spending the better part of a month here. And I am engaging in my second favorite pastime: people-watching.
People-watching is a lot like bird-watching, only more colorful. I am eating a sandwich with my wife, sipping coffee, and quietly observing all the species who go by.
As with birds, you can learn a lot about people just by watching.
I remember our fourth-grade Christmas pageant. I was a wise man. We had three wise men, but one of them was a girl because the girls in our class outnumbered the boys roughly 265 to 1. So Allen Powers and I were cast as “wise men,” but so was Brigette Parker, our trio’s only “wise woman” and the unofficial conscience of our battalion, who affectionately called Allen and me “wiseasses.”
But anyway, before each performance, Mrs. Anderson used to always say to our class, “Always smile, because someone in the audience is watching you.”
As it happens, I am the one doing the watching today. I see a lot of travelers. I see a wide range of emotion. I see smiling. I see hugging. I see reunions. I see romance. I see maternal love. Also, I see people who seem to be tired, hyper-vigilant, anxious, in a hurry, confused, stressed out, and downright sad.
There is an older man and his wife, for example, holding each other and she looks like she is crying on his shoulder. I think they must be Spanish because their clothes and mannerisms say Spain. But her sorrow is a universal language of its own.
I can feel her agony from here. I don’t know what she’s going through, but I know it has to do with loss. I don’t know how I know this. I can just tell.
Meantime, there are teens behind me. Maybe six of them. Girls and boys. They are high on the hallucinogen of youth. They have the world by the short hairs. And I feel their beautiful zest.
But I also see sadness in a young woman in their company. She is quiet, head kept down. And her friends don’t really know what to do with her, so she just seems to vanish from their sight. And I remember what it feels like to vanish.
There is, of course, no way I could know what she’s experiencing, but for some reason, I feel the sting of rejection in her body language. Is there anything worse than rejection?
There is a large group of college-age kids. They are all wearing matching green T-shirts. A group trip. Future Farmers of America maybe. A Catholic youth group or something. Most of them are smiling, laughing, and horsing around, making their way through the airport. I see no worry on their faces. I see only fraternal joy. I see complete excitement for whatever adventure lies ahead.
But I also see one boy who is not laughing. He is walking far behind the group, clasping his backpack straps tightly. He seems so alone. And I wonder why he is alone.
Loneliness doesn’t just happen. Loneliness is a personal choice. And it’s always a last resort.
I see a man sitting in a wheelchair. The woman who is with him has been guiding his chair through the airport, and now she is in the restroom. He’s outside waiting for her. He’s youngish, maybe 30. He’s been smiling whenever he is with her, wearing a happy face, but the moment she leaves him, his exterior crumbles.
I can swear I see pain in his body language. His head hangs low, and it looks as though he bears the fate of the Free World on his shoulders.
And I’m wondering if always wearing that smile gets exhausting sometimes.
I see a man having an animated video call conversation on a cellphone. He is so happy, it seems. He is grinning at his phone camera. I can hear the voice of a toddler on the other end, and I can feel the exuberance of new fatherhood coming from this man.
But in the same restaurant, I see a waitress who is sitting by herself. She is not playing on a phone like the thousands surrounding her. She is simply staring ahead. Flat-faced, pondering everything and nothing at once.
We humans are not unlike a flock of robins or common sparrows. We chatter and cluck and squawk. We move through life in our tight formations, tending to flock together for better or worse.
We follow our predictable routines and adhere to a pecking order that we ourselves did not choose. We migrate from one place to another. We nest. We molt and reinvent ourselves, time and again. And occasionally we spread our wings and fly.
We have a few days of heavy travel ahead of us. I might not be writing much in the following days. Which is why I just want to say:
Life is difficult. Maybe we drift through periods when we feel unseen. Sometimes, not unlike birds, we might even lose altitude and fall. But don’t lose heart. Smile. Because Mrs. Anderson was right. No matter what kind of sparrow you are, there is Someone out there in the audience watching you.
