Blinking

NEW AIRPORT ENTRANCE
1/2 MILE AHEAD

The rectangular construction sign repeats this to me, every time I drive past. The sign speaks without emotion; blocky, bright orange capital letters endlessly blinking their message to passerby.

Don’t fret, they say. Your new gateway to somewhere else has just been moved several hundred yards west. Please continue on.

Every day for these past two weeks I have read the sign. Twice a day I see it; in the morning, when the frozen roads command all of my attention, it nods at me like a calendar notification: Don’t forget! New airport entrance, 1/2 mile ahead!

In the mornings, the sign’s message isn’t intended for me. It’s for the six am-ers and their early flights out of town, a helpful reminder for visiting relatives that prompts them to turn a little bit sooner. I like to think that sign has aided many an out-of-state uncle or aunt with checking their bags and making it to the correct gate on time. In the mornings, the sign is a benevolent cue, a helpful little prod in the backside of the mind.

I see the sign for the second time when I get off work, when sun is just beginning to cast long shadows over the mountains that dominate the horizon. It hasn’t snowed in three days, so the roads are mostly clear. I can look up from the pavement in the evenings and marvel at the snowy peaks and sky the color of clementines. Because I can look up, I can see the sign for real.

I watch it come at me the way I imagine a quarterback sees a linebacker on a blitz, out of the corner of my eye and looming fast. The over-sized construction-zone speed limit sign hides it for a moment; the right guard in a valiant attempt to block for me. But to no avail. As the 35 MPH text slides from view, the sign appears in an instant, a monstrosity of black metal and flashing bulbs. In the evenings, the sign is anything but benevolent.

NEW AIRPORT ENTRANCE, it blinks, mockingly. It may as well read LOSE ALL HOPE, for the feeling I get in my stomach as I read it is akin to the apex of a roller coaster; I’m at top, the beginning, and I can feel body tipping out over the void, into empty space. My trust in the set of tracks below me suddenly seems misplaced.

Now the sign is an indicator of the end of a road. No longer am I being nudged in the direction of a timely departure. The beginning of the end of everything you know and understand starts here, the sign proclaims with mirth. This is where you’ll leave your fortress of mountains.

The second blink is worse, though, because it sets a time limit. Flash forward a few days: imagine it’s around 9 in the morning. Instead of shadows, the sun is just peaking it’s head over the peaks, painting the white landscape with a coat of blinding glitter. The sign will speak to me, then. In a 1/2 mile, you’ll leave everything you love…and for who knows what?

I see myself, seeing the sign. Like a slighted spouse, it demands I look into its eyes. Because I know I’m guilty, I fail to hold its gaze. In the evenings the sign doesn’t speak to grandma and grandpa on their way back to Florida. It speaks to me. This will be you, turning here, it says. Soon.

The last time I came home for a break, the sign hadn't been present. Roadwork on the Frontage to install a direct line from the interstate to the airport began in early summer and persisted until I returned to Washington for school. When I left, the airport entrance had been where it had always been.

Now an underpass, a shiny new set of stoplights, and a phalanx of orange cones and gravel block traffic from the old entrance. The sign directs people to where they need to be, the new asphalt path to everywhere a few hundred yards down the road.

The sign isn't malicious in it’s own right; it can’t be. Yet every time I drive past it I am propelled into the future, on the day when my plane will leave the tarmac and take me to a wholly new place.

And that scares me.

Is it wrong to blame the sign for reminding me of my impending departure? Probably. But it’s difficult to separate the object’s function from my own emotions because I see it every day, and studying abroad is what has been dominating a large part of my thoughts in the past week.

I don’t know what to expect or what to prepare for. The reality of where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing has to to fully hit me. I don’t know if I’ll fit right in or face total bewilderment. Hell, I haven’t been on an airplane for seven years. I’m scared of heights.

What am I doing?

The damned blinking sign is a constant reminder of choices that have brought me to this point in my life. As scared as I am, I can’t blame it for escalating my emotions. That’s like blaming an alarm for waking you up. It’s just doing what it’s supposed to, due to your choice to set it previously.

Regardless of how your present self feels about the situation, your past self has thought it out and arranged all the preparations. It’s going to happen at some point, and, like an alarm clock, it’s likely to be startling. But the alarm is also a guide of sorts, leading you out of lethargy and forward into the next day. It’s not unreasonable to think that the blinking orange letters of a construction sign could perform a similar function; waking me up, pushing me fearlessly out of my second thoughts and into a truly memorable experience. Making sure I take the second left.

I suppose I can get on board with that.

I’m aiming to write a whole lot in the days leading up to my trip abroad, and even more after I arrive. I won’t cover anything in particular, for now. Just what I see and hear, observations that touch me and make me think and feel deeply. I hope you’ll come along.

-Christian