CHRISTMAS EVE, CHARLOTTE INTERNATIONAL, 10:47 P.M.
Based On Actual Events
By
Andrew J. Clark
The plane finished its rumbling trek across the tarmac and rolled to a stop amongst blustering drifts of snow. There was a ding as the fasten-seat-belts sign switched off, and I gathered my things, breathing a heavy sigh. I moved slowly, as there was no rush. My connecting flight didn’t leave until almost midnight, and it never took me very long to make the walk to the gate. Charlotte was a small airport, and I knew it almost by heart, I had made the connection so many times.
I slung my messenger bag over my shoulder, and grabbed my travel suitcase and made my down the aisle, and into the terminal, all the while asking myself why I hadn’t just stayed at school. I was absolutely swamped with work, and of course two of my professors had assigned papers due the week after our return to the university. All the stress of modern travel, school, work and the holidays all culminated in a dull sort of anxiety that wouldn’t leave. I was irritated because I didn’t have enough money to buy anything for my family, and that always made me feel a little guilty and much ashamed.
I passed into the terminal and made my way to the central hub, walking along the moving walkways and gazing out the glass walls into the darkened world outside the airport. Speckled snow darted here and there in the breeze, but beyond that I couldn’t see much of anything. I never really counted airports as having been anywhere. Technically, I had been to Paris, Oman, Baltimore and Orlando; but I had never actually been there, never stepped foot outside the airports. It was like some strange in-between world, a transitional realm that harbored you on your way to the places you actually know. I had come to associate the sounds and sights and smells with that feeling. The carbonized smell of filtered airplane air, the faintly musical drone of the tired songs they pumped through the airport speakers, the half-shiny, half-fingerprinted gleam of the metallic construct of almost everything involved with travel. They all added up to that sensation, that in-between waking dream.
I breathed another heavy sigh as I realized it wasn’t just the travel that gave me that sensation. It was almost everything. It seemed like my life was one big In-Between. I was in some amorphous land, in between childhood and adulthood, employed and unemployed, student and graduated, home or away. Stuck in transition. And everything added up to the same thing – the in-between music, the in-between air, the in-between people – it all added up to nowhere. The sum was nothing.
I reached the hub and made my way through the food-court ghost-town, past the dim facades of the closed Orange Julius and the Cinnabon and the Shanghai Wok, in-between stops on an endless road. My family had convinced me to come home, and I wondered how I was going to find the energy to actually enjoy myself. I didn’t know if I would be able to.
Maybe in response to that in-between sensation, I had developed the habit of creating my own spots on my way, little places that I thought of as mine. I had passed through Charlotte International so many times that I had found one, one of several rocking chairs that sat on a balcony overlooking the sweep of the main terminal hub. The balcony was accessed by a curving staircase on either side, and I trudged my way up and plopped down in my chair, the one toward the far left. I stared into blank space for several minutes before checking my cell phone and seeing it was still before 11. I could see the big, glowing blue C that marked the concourse where my gate was located, and I settled back into my chair and waited.
I have always been an observer. It helps pass the time, and it was so ingrained in me that I did it without thinking. I began to look around the terminal and take stock of what was there. A man in a business suit attached to a cell phone, a woman with a small girl sitting in two of the chairs on the floor below, the child kicking the table-post anxiously. There was a pair of young women on the other end of the balcony that looked to be about my age. Some part of me briefly considered going to talk to them, but then another part of me dismissed it as pointless. I didn’t feel like dealing with the looks of dreadful surprise when they thought that I was hitting on them.
There were several others scattered within my view all with the same look about them, the same look I’m sure I had about me: the look of transition, the look of someone just waiting to be somewhere where they can rest. I settled back into my chair, pulled my bags a little closer to me and sighed again, listening to the hum and murmur of the airport. There was an empty bar below with a grand piano next to it, a gift shop across the way, and a newspaper stand back the way I had come. It was late, so it wasn’t very loud, and the whole place had an air of pre-abandonment, stores shut down and every person waiting to make their exit.
Out of the hush came a faint squeak. It was one of those noises that you don’t register until it’s been sounding for a while, and when your mind finally notices it, you realize how it’s been annoying the back end of your brain for quite some time. I leaned forward and tried to identify the sound, and finally I saw a figure emerge from the D concourse.
The figure was a man, African-American with salt and pepper hair and goatee, wearing a janitor’s uniform. The squeak was coming from one of the wheels of the rolling bucket he was pushing, using the handle of the mop to steer it. He crossed the polished floor of the terminal, and I watched him. He nodded at some of the people he passed, a friendly half-grin on his face. He made his way toward the bar, and his eyes fell on the grand piano. As I watched, I saw a moment of hesitation. His step checked-up, and he cast his gaze around, as if he was trying to make up his mind about something. He took one last look around, propped the mop handle against the bar, and slowly sat down at the piano.
He lifted the cover guarding the keys, and laid his dark hands on the keys. And then he began to play.
He played softly, and the notes drifted through the air like the snow outside, a tinkling of music that seemed to quiet the airport even further. I never took my eyes off him, but I could tell that everyone else was looking at him as well. The business man with the cell phone had shut up, and the little girl has stopped tapping her toe against the table.
His playing wasn’t professional, but it was good, with a slow and jazz-like movement to it. I watched his fingers as they moved across the keys, and I realized that this was just a warm-up. After a minute of this he fell into a rhythm, a structure, and it took me a moment to recognize the tune. But as soon as I did the words fell effortlessly into my mind…
I’ll be home for Christmas…
I listened, rapt, in one of the few moments in my life where my mind quiets, and the swirl of thoughts calms, and I simply am. Time seemed to slow, and I let the melody take me away, and lost myself in the graceful shift of the song. I few moments later the man’s playing slowed, the notes becoming softer, gentler, lingering, like a strand of thread so fragile it could break if the very air moves too strongly.
The song came to an end, and without thinking, I began to applaud. I wasn’t the only one. I looked around the terminal, and everyone was clapping – the business man, the woman and her little girl, the pair of young ladies exchanging smiles as they applauded. The man stood and gave a slightly embarrassed waved, grinned and nodded, and found his mop and bucket, and began to wheel them away.
I thought about going after him to shake his hand, but I decided against it. It was better to let that moment and music be itself. Slowly, I bent and grabbed my bags and started for the C concourse. And as I walked I could feel the smile lingering on my face. And I was reminded of so much I had forgotten…
I thought about my house, and the people it held. Hugging my mother, the embrace of my father, my brother’s grin and my sister’s friendly smile. I thought about waking up and spending the morning with them. I thought about the phone call to my grandmother, where we all took turns talking to her. I thought about visiting old friends that I hadn’t seen in months.
And then I realized something. I remembered that the end isn’t the point. That there is still magic to be found, even in the most unlikely of times and places. And those moments are what hold everything else together – the love, joy and hope that forms the mortar in between the milestones of your life. That you can’t get so wrapped up in what you have to do that you forget yourself, those around you, and the unlimited potential of right now. Life happens in the In-Between.
And as I walked through the airport gazing out at the beautiful spirals of snow, as I came down the jetway, and as I heard the attendant shut the plane door behind me, I realized something else…
Suddenly, I couldn’t wait to get home.
