Transit
I am in transit tonight. I am sitting in the airport lounge killing the hours, waiting for my flight to leave. I’m visiting my parents in France, to be with my mom in the aftermath of a very heavy operation she’s just had.
I arrived at the airport well on time, straight after work, and found my way up from the train station to departure level. My first question (would I have to pay the extra fee for the train ride to the airport just like other passengers, even though as a journalist I normally ride free on regular trajectories) was quickly resolved when the train conductor checked my transport documents (I was half expecting to have to pay extra, for only doing so on the train, but it turns out I didn’t have to at all), only to present me with the next complication straight away.
In order to gain entrance to the airport from the train station, you had to flash your train ticket in front of a laser lens controlling the automatic doors. Only I didn’t have a proper train ticket, just a journalist’s transport ID. No worries, though: a kind and helpful official shot a glance at my document and waved me through immediately.
I found a place to sit and have something resembling supper: a slice of warmed-up pizza and a ridiculously expensive drink to go with it.
Wandering the airport hallways, I am confronted with myself. It keeps surprising me how stressful I find this kind of venture.
You’d think that at forty, I would not be very concerned about taking a plane. I boarded my first plane when I was fourteen, on a London trip with my family. A few years later my then-boyfirned and I flew to Spain several times during the summer holidays. Twenty years ago I flew to Seattle all by myself, to spend a fortnight with a Mormon friend and his family. I made it through customs at Newark airport, and caught my corresponding flight. These were the pre- 9/11 days, but still: it was no small feat for the shy and inexperienced youth I was back then. I arrived at the Seattle airport to find there was no one waiting for me, and I already saw myself wandering an unknown city at night, trying to find a place to sleep… That was the closest I ever came to a real panic. Eventually, I managed to call my friend’s house from a pay phone (no cells back then, either), and his mother reassured me he had indeed come to pick me up. Turned out he was waiting at the customs exit instead of the domestic flights exit.
I have taken many more flights since then, alone, with my husband, or with my young son. I know how the whole thing works, I am an adult with the right papers, the right boarding pass and knowledge of all three national languages in this country, plus English. I am not even afraid of flying.
So why am I stressed out?
Mind you, it’s not the kind of sweaty-palmed, close-to-panic stress I experienced in Seattle. If it was, I simply would not put myself through this, or I would go into some sort of therapy. You can’t have that kind of paralyzing fear ruling your life, as far as I’m concerned.
No, this is just a basic level of discomfort, something between an emotional pain and an itch, a gnawing uncertainty. It doesn’t keep me from functioning, but it does tend to sap my strengths. I am forever wandering whether I am doing everything right, whether I will find my way, whether there won’t be any unexpected problems. (These days, in any European airport one can’t help but think about terrorist attacks, too, but these are thoughts I do not allow myself to linger on for very long. Three days a week I work two blocks away from the Brussels metro station where the terrorist bombings took place two years ago. Life goes on and we have to live it. It’s no use wasting energy on calculating the absurdly small odds of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.)
Perhaps it’s just the control freak within me having a hard time. There is no controlling this place, or the constant bombardment of stimuli accosting me from all sides. I am not one to blend in and follow the flow of strangers. But there are very few cosy corners where one can curl up and make oneself at home. Instead, there are only formalities, long, crowded hallways, noisy, crowded bars and restaurants and endless, empty hours.
I will be okay. I have made it through the most stressing part already: customs and luggage check. Now it will just be a couple of long hours before the ensemble of waiting, boarding, flying, debarking and driving to Fauch will at last be over. But I’m looking forward to seeing my dad, who is coming to pick me up, and my mom, who might be asleep by the time we get home, but who will get her get-well hug double in the morning.
