Before I get started with this story, I realize I am committing several sins in the world of social media. First, stories really shouldn’t be longer than around 800 words and Part 1 clocked in at least 50% higher. Second, you give time for stories to gestate and you don’t send out one after the other. What can I say? I’ve had nothing, but time on my hands and nowhere to go, such is the nature of the glorious air travel experience.
I tell you, I sure have plenty of time to think.. At this moment, I am sitting in the Seattle Airport, with around seven hours before my flight home. It feels like sitting all alone in a fish bowl, surrounded by strangers, each absorbed in their comings and goings. There is an insane theatricality about it all, each having escaped their asylums of routine.
Years ago, when being young and single meant you’d go to noisy, crowded bar, I found myself incredibly uncomfortable. For quite a while, I thought there was something wrong with me, because I felt so incredibly uncool in these kind of settings. I am not sure when I realized that I was picking up on the energy of those around me. In those kind of settings, everyone is performing and the energetic artifice is palpable, at least to me. Now, I am kind of OK, withdrawing into my own cocoon of silence, but the discomfort has never left me. It’s not like you overcome who you are, rather you become more accepting and less judgmental, but it’s still an imperfect compromise.
I definitely feel like I shrink in the intersecting chaos of all the infinite interactions in very public settings like airports. The funny thing is, nobody gives a shit about anyone other than themselves. Of course, being rational and being human are often at odds with each other. There is no reason at all for me to be so self-conscious, because everyone is so self-consumed that no one really cares what I do and say.
Of course, the most important thing about travel is the destination, the reason for this self-inflicted torture in the first place. The challenge is to keep that in mind, whether coming or going. My primary reason for this trip was to spend time with my grandson. I was also curious when in his chronological progression I’d begin to see the person he was destined to become. On this trip, I was able to witness the birth of a person, a free standing, young man, beginning to draw the map of his own life. It was a thrill for grandpa.
This would be the time where I talk about the details of this visit, my evolving relationship with my grandson and my interactions with my son and daughter-in-law, but I am bound by my self-imposed rules of writing. I think each of us is in charge of our own privacy and it feels like a kind of theft when the stories of others become intertwined with your own. What I am hoping to create with my grandson is something that only belongs to the two of us. I will not hesitate to strip away the layers of my own life, but the pedals of other people’s lives are their own to peel away or not.
If there was a mission for this travel, it was accomplished. I was also able to share my love for my son and daughter-in-law and I was border line effusive. Silence breeds confusion, allowing the other to fill in the blanks, often misguided by their own bias. When you start thinking about time the way I do now, your words and gestures can either be gifts or curses, carried forward by the innocent recipients.
In several hours, I will be boarding the final flight of this trip. It is a six hour flight, taking me home to my Kauai. Time and distance have a way of coloring memory. I am certain that my time with my grandson will only sweeten with distance.
God knows, I am someone who loves his routines and travel is a disruption of gargantuan proportions. I will wake up tomorrow morning in the world I have constructed for myself. The comings and goings will fade away under the constancy of reclamation. However, what will remain immutable will be the first sight of my grandson and our subsequent connection during this visit.
Thank you for keeping me company.