airports

Met the morning with Doug bellowing "oh DRIVER! Driver I need you... it's 6:30, time to get up and go..." He is off to Scottsdale Arizona for a conference/training thing for the hospital field he works in (rehab outcomes management) and I had to drive him into Logan Airport for his flight.

Fight is at 10am, so of course we are leaving at 7am (with all the commuters heading to Boston). I am not awake so he drives and I sit in my PJs in the passenger seat with a big coffee. I figure I'll be more awake for the trip home, and he's WIDE awake and bright eyed and bushy-tailed. So I let him do the driving.

Traffic is awful, which gives me time as a passenger to look down side streets off of Rte 60 into neighborhoods and industrial zones that I never get to look at. I also get to gaze longingly at airplanes. I'm impressed by their size, by the physics of what they do. The huge, shiny white noses with tiny little itty bitty windows for the pilots to look out of. My guess is they fly mostly with their gauges and science than by visuals based on the window sizes. I'm also impressed by how clean they are, compared to the front ends of cars and trucks. Air is much cleaner than roads, I guess.

At the airport, Terminal B, we are blocked in by vehicles that decide the second lane is the drop off lane, even though it is really the curb. I get out of the car to give him a hug and a kiss (apologizing for my coffee breath) and I'm aware that the woman behind us is looking at us. Him in his dress pants, dress shirt, shoes and his luggage, me in my oversize Pitt T-shirt and pyjama pants, flip-flops glasses and hair scrunchy with my coffee cup in hand.

It's almost like I'm kissing him goodbye at our front door as he goes to the office. Only I'm 40 minutes from the front door. This is a different front door, a different commute. And unlike his usual morning commute where I don't get to see him off (being unemployed means I sleep until 10am usually and he's gone at 6:45) I am glad to have the opportunity to see him off.

We take our time with goodbye and stand at the back of the Subaru for a minute because we (and the woman behind us) are still blocked in. I wonder if she looks at us and says "God, they are so fat..." or what she thinks. He takes his garment bag and backpack, tells me that he forgot our friend Amy R's phone number and asks me to call his voicemail with it. He is off. I walk around to the driver's side, get in, adjust the seat and mirrors to where I like them, and put the car in drive and signal on while I wait for the hotel shuttle vehicle and Limo Service car to move out of the way.

He's off to Scottsdale. I'm still in my pyjamas. And I'm jealous that I won't be waking up tomorrow in a hotel in the Southwest.

I need a vacation.