Airports observations from Savannah to Toronto:

ONE:

I was in the airport in Savannah. I’d just gone through the first security and boarding pass check and was waiting in line for security check. I watched as a lovely young family with two small children approached the security and boarding pass check. They were a man, a woman, a young girl, and a younger boy. By that description they sound like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

But this family wasn’t that type of family. They were much less white. The father was a tall black man with his hair somewhere between Kid and Play who smiled almost constantly. I wondered if he did that to soften himself for white people. The mother was a short Asian woman with long hair. The kids were a blur of colours and toys and energy — they were lovely kids, behaving as well as they could under the exciting circumstances. They were going somewhere!

The mother held all the things and ushered the kids past the checkpoint after they had the go-ahead. The father hung back to collect all the documents. In that brief moment he was separated from his family, a solo black man. In the chaos of the moment, a white man slotted into the line between the father and his family.

I watched as the father so gently squeezed past the white man and touched his daughter’s shoulder as if to say, “I belong here, I’m not cutting in line.” In that small moment, this husband and father was made both of those things and was made to ‘belong’ by his tiny daughter. She had the ‘power’ to properly place him. And yet, every member of that family will continue to be displaced throughout their lives. Never quite fitting what others expect. Never quite fitting without each other for context.

Airports are those places that remind us of where we fit.

TWO:

It was Valentine’s Day. I was traveling home, the opposite direction of my passport. I am American and my home is in Canada. It makes border crossings an interesting moment for an over-thinker like me. When leaving the USA, TSA asks, ‘when are you coming home?’ and I say, “I’m going home now” the notion of home is all-over-the-place.

And traveling is such a funny thing. I remember years ago jumping on a flight in Accra, Ghana heading to Amsterdam. I was one of the only white people onboard. Then in Amsterdam all the colours collided in the airport. I boarded the flight to New York where the colour variety slimmed down, but was still a cornucopia. When I boarded a flight to Raleigh/Durham from New York on that same journey, for my final leg, to return ‘home’ the entire plane felt white. The contrast on that journey from Accra to Raleigh was so intense. It wasn’t just colour though — culture narrowed with each leg of that journey. The expectation of behaviour (of fitting in) got louder with each leg.

Anyway, it was Valentine’s Day and I was traveling home to Canada from Charlotte, NC. The regional flights have a different feel from the international flights — even the ones that are just traveling internationally to Canada (i.e. not that far, but still International as hell). I was traveling to Toronto, a place I am ‘seen’ as a woman (more often than not), from a place I am ‘seen’ often as a man (TSA, airports, the USA, the South, all of the above).

On this flight I was crossing my own gender continental divide. And because the boarding gate collects those of us making the same journey, I noticed others who were crossing their own divide.

Sitting next to me on the plane was a 30-something black man. He had big headphones and was carrying enough technology to make his pants sag from the weight in his pockets alone. We were dressed similarly — travel comfy. We got onboard and settled in to take off.

We were on our way. The stewardess was delivering drinks. My seat-mate ordered a Coke and Jack. He poured his tiny bottle into his bubbly cup and sipped a late-night elixir. He had pulled his wallet out, waiting for the woman to accept his payment but she had already carried on delivering drinks to the people in the seats behind us.

It’s a short flight, so before too long, the same stewardess was coming through the cabin to get us situated for landing. Again, my seat-mate pulled out his wallet and this time had his card in hand — a sign he was ready to pay. As she was slipping past him, he said, ‘excuse me, I still need to pay.’ She smiled at him and said, ‘That’s ok baby. It’s Valentine’s and all.’ He smiled back and thanked her. Such a lovely, human moment.

I kept thinking that this 50-something black woman was welcoming this young black man across a kind of human continental divide in that moment. “Here, have a drink, baby. You don’t usually get one, do you?”