Basement Chronicles

Coming Home, Chapter 1

There's a specific jovial characteristic in the sound of your shoes against the tile in an airport corridor. It's as if the feeling of giddiness you get when you finally come home has manifested itself in your stride and you can hear it when your heels click with each step. Physically, your legs are glad to get up and stretch themselves, the long seemingly endless hallways being such an amazing contrast to sardine size coach seats. But there is another aspect to a walk like this that is specific to disembarking from a return flight, as opposed to an outgoing one. All the noise and business in a place like that couldn't come close to drowning out that jolly sound. The same is true when you're on a trip of a grave or unpleasant nature. You can almost hear, without even seeing a person, the sloth or anxiety in their step, as if their feet themselves were calling out "I don't want to go."

This was not one of those times however. This was a homecoming of such grandeur none before, nor any to come for that matter, would match it, and the sound of my stride captured that. It was one of those feelings that distorts time so everything seems like its taking forever. My indifference to the matter could have filled that gigantic cathedral sized concourse many times over. I skipped the automatic walkway, that being reserved for hurried people, their strides neither displaying joy nor grief, simply a need to be somewhere instead of enchantment with the journey that takes them there.

I admired every shop and passerby as if I was actually anxious to get to security and walk through the open archway that symbolized my return. I tried to identify, as I was to gaily strolling by, where these people were going, and the nature of their trips. I could see the usual signs: choice suit and slacks with bright shiny shoes and a suitcase; a frazzled looking woman carrying bulging luggage covered in duct tape and scuffmarks, obviously on it's last leg, with a retinue of two boys and a girl, all bickering; a small backpack, slender legs clad in striped pink socks, with short hair colored to match and an iPod, slumped down against one of the pylons lining the concourse. Each of these people going somewhere just like I was. The shops selling every magazine imaginable, every thing you could possibly eat or drink while reading said magazines, and every type of over-the-counter drug you'd need after you got sick from all the reading, candy, and caffeinated beverages. The name of my home town emblazoned on every type of gift that could be legally carried onto a plane, and some that couldn't. Franchise restaurants downsized to the point that they can operate successfully in an average size office cubicle and sped up to the point that they could service every patron without slowing down (or so they'd have you think.) Placards of every size, shape, and color announcing where you needed to go in the airport, and how to get there, as if getting to your plane was a journey in and of itself. Places like this always gave me a feeling of being left behind, or unimportant. Everyone was going somewhere and that place was not where I was. Unfamiliar faces were always racing by, headed somewhere better. Unlike all the other airports I had been to, this one always meant home. Whenever I walked out from one of those gates into the splendor of my home town glowing in through the giant sized windows, I knew I was back. Though the sight of a beautiful landscape I could never mistake for anywhere else meant that I was home, it also meant the end to a journey. Places I'd never see again, things I'd never do again, and people, the substance of life, that I'd never see again. This despair of ending was always dismissed with the thought of those people caressing the marble walkways of their own hometown airports with the soles of their shoes, those same shoes whispering their happiness into the fray of another day at Anywhere International, beginning another chapter in their lives while ending one as well.

So I walked, with my jacket over my left arm and my backpack carry-on on my back, the grin on my face barely perceptible, even to me. Claire de Lune played softly over the airport speakers in between muffled last calls for passengers, either late or somewhere better. Had someone else been in such a euphoric state as I was we might have collided. Luckily, no one seemed as elated as I was to be where they were. Anticipation began to nip at my heels and I began to walk normally, still grinning toward the pinnacle of my arrival. The security gate was pumping people through like a major artery pumps blood through the body, branching off to different concourses just as blood does to major veins. My own heart began to pump faster as I thought to myself whether she'd be standing up or sitting down. The security gate was right before me now, "EXIT ONLY" screamed down at me and I smirked back as if I'd rather go any other way. As I turned the corner and proceeded through the gate I slowed my walk so I could accurately scan the room. As I looked about the escalators, and benches, and ticket counters and the huge foyer itself, I couldn't see her. I wasn't surprised as there were many people there and finding her would be a feat, but further inspection coupled further plummeting of my elated feelings into despair that she hadn't come. I finally gave up looking and found my way to a payphone to call my buddy to see if he'd be able to come and pick me up. I palmed my jeans pocket for a quarter and a dime and put them into the payphone. The clicking of the change into the various compartments came with a resonating sound I had heard scant minutes before: the meeting of happy soles against a hometown floor.

I turned before she could say whatever witty line she had prepared as a cheap harmless prank, dropped the phone and lifted her off the ground. Her surprised laughter drowned out all the other chaotic noise. I was home.