To the airport

What is it that they say? Time flies when you're... in North arolina for Thanksgiving, and then juggling parenting, teaching, painting walls in West Virginia, and making revisions on a book? Yes, yes: those old folk sayings sure have a truth to them.

So my apologies for the hiatus - but, fortified by homemade pumpkin pie, visits with all four grandparents, and a shiny new first-place trophy in my fantasy football league, I'm back, and full of ideas. My first idea, though, isn't quite wholly new, since, as some of you may remember, I've written on airports before. That was long before, however, I had a cute little one-year-old in my charge, and so on a recent, raw Tuesday Cleo and I drove out to BWI to see what we could see.

As adults, we often think of airports as purely functional spaces. Signs direct us to the checkpoint and then to the gate. Maybe we dart into a newsroom and buy a paper; restrooms are always generously spaced. Got a laptop? There's an outlet. From the point of view of a toddler, though, airports are ridiculously sick playgrounds. Elevators, escalators, moving sidewalks: BWI has that holy trifecta, in spades. The large window in the observation deck peers out towards a number of planes that look just like the ones in the board books, and no one seems to mind if you just purse your lips and do your best, slobbering imitation of a plane in the air.

So you can imagine. Cleo rolled her stroller about, being careful to avoid the huge jet engine in the children's hall, and I tried to slide as far as I could on the highly polished marble steps. We squeaked, and she squealed, and we chatted, in a manner of speaking, and then Cleo made that great airplane noise again. And then we split a granola bar.

But even as I tried to give myself over, over and over, to being one, there was another sort of soundtrack in the back of my mind. Something much more deliberate, more meditative, more restrained. More abtract, and more adult. Something comforting, in an entirely different way. Perhaps you know which airport music I mean.

It's grand to be 18 months old, in an airport. And it's great to be 40, as well.