This is Not the Breakfast Club

My car had broken down on the way to the airport. I was stressed about missing my flight until this lovely old couple pulled over. Turns out, they were headed to the airport too. The wife responded, “Problem solved, sweetheart. You can ride with us, get your car towed somewhere safe, and it will be there when you get back.” She was gentle in that way wiser women can be, like she’d already decided I was worth caring about.

The three of us walked in together. Out of nowhere a frantic mother with a giant suitcase cut between us, and when I turned back to hug and thank them, the couple was gone. I told myself they were just in a hurry, but for a second I wondered if they were guardian angels. My own grandparents had passed; maybe they sent them. Snap out of it. Even then I was… well, daydreaming.

It’s chilly… inside the box within a bigger box that has become my motel for the evening sans blinking “OTL” light flashing just outside. The lights are bothersome but I’d gotten used to them. I had carved out a nice little spot on the floor with my back against the wall and a small carry-on suitcase wedged between me and whoever was sitting on the other side of it. In a pinch it would do as a pillow. This is not my first time on an airport floor.

Who is flying at this hour? There can’t be that many delayed flights. Yet the overnight automated lady announcer seems to have a lot to say. Just enough to let my guard down only to slightly flinch at every interruption to my quiet. I pass the time by wondering what may be open to eat. Then I research. Then I plan what I will get. Then I realize I am eating to kill time, so I abort that idea entirely. I think about things that have made me curious lately so maybe I can chat to AI on the topic for a while. I’d sleep if I thought I wouldn’t wake up by myself with the plane having come and gone while I dreamt of that burger I was contemplating earlier.

I can’t seem to stop myself from glancing over at the little girl, 9 or 10, who was also sitting on the floor. She’s still coloring. Still silent and well behaved. I’m familiar with that feeling she must be experiencing. Waiting, feeling like the ending will never come. Wanting a mother who used the time to bond and laugh. Instead, she got a self-absorbed space cadet off on another planet. Boy do I know how that goes. I empathize on a level that is much deeper than it needs to be.

I want to sit next to her to talk or give her some company. I want to help her pass the time and be acknowledged. Sadly, I can’t. These days you can’t simply go up to a child to chit chat. It’s considered threatening, which is a good and bad thing. I see her look at me every now and then. We catch each other looking. Eventually we awkwardly grin at one another. That is our introduction. I feel like I know her already.

I thought it would be a good idea but now I'm thinking my car breaking down was a sign for me not to go. I wanted closure from the "home" where I never really had a home but had lived most of my life. I didn't want anything from anyone. The places, the memories, the liveliness were what I missed.

What I was really doing was trying to put off finding a purpose, my purpose. After all the recent trauma I'd just been through, I would never be me again. But I could see me. In those memories.

Around 3AM, just when I started to pull out a warm sweater and coat to sleep in and was curling up along the wall near the girl, a woman walks up to me. Strange, I hadn't seen her waiting until now.

"Have we met before? I know this sounds weird but I'd swear I know you from somewhere?”

I wasn't sure. She did appear familiar in that sense of the word where anyone could seem familiar in the middle of the night. I remember thinking, "Please, not now. I'm so tired." We small-talked for a bit and named some places we could have met but nothing was panning out.

Eventually I said, "I have one of those familiar faces. I've been told that a lot."

She replied, "Yeah, you're right. Well, thanks for indulging me anyway. I'll let you get some rest. Looks like you found a nice spot. I'm stuck in a chair next to a lady with a dog that yaps constantly."

We both laughed and I told her it was nice to meet her and if they stayed in the airport I’d probably stop by to say hi. They chuckled again, getting that it was now like a neighborhood.

It’s as if a gust of wind flew past me as it enveloped my body and went straight through me. “What was that?” I thought. It took my brain a bit longer to catch up with my senses. It was then that I realized the little girl who had walked over light and without worry had just made that gust with her tiny little person. And the reason I felt it strongly is because it was my favorite smell in the world. It was from visits to my nana and she would spend so much time in her basement. Mostly doing laundry and it’s where they kept the dog’s stuff, my uncle’s ancient workout equipment, and several other items that needed to be stored. It was tidy and clean and had this smell. A mixture of the history of that old basement. It smelled like fresh laundry times ten or if laundry and fresh cut grass had a child, that is the smell it would be. I thought about that for what seemed like ages but it must have only been seconds since she was already giving me a turn at coloring.

I wasn’t as tired now. The company helped. Or maybe it was the coffee. Did I go get coffee? Hmmph. 3AM must have brought it for me at some point and I was too delirious to notice. I hope I said thank you. It was hot in my hands like it had just been poured even though I’m pretty sure I’d been awake for a bit now. It didn’t matter. The hot soothed my aching, internal shiver. Then I noticed we all were drinking our hot beverages, lost in silence, or sometimes chit chat. Little girl had gotten a hot cocoa at some point. Probably when I got my coffee. It was one of those cozy intimate moments where you feel like you’re with people who just get you. I was already dreading not seeing them again. We would go back to our similar yet dissimilar lives and probably forget in a matter of days. Weeks if they really made an imprint.

The 3AM woman is hard for me to pick up on at first. Her vibe. Eventually it was as clear to see as if I were talking to myself. Easygoing, not oversharing but not being vague enough to come off as cryptic. Confident, like she knew who she was but didn’t think too much about it. Assured, maybe wise. She knew where she was going, in and out of the airport. I enjoyed our initial exchange and now that I’m wide awake again, I wished I hadn’t ended the conversation so abruptly. I am a grumpy sleeper.

I found myself comparing the two of us. I don’t usually do that because I know everyone is not really who they are when behind closed doors. I could be envying someone with a life way more unstable than anything I’ve seen. People are only human. I get that. But on this occasion, I thought about how nice it would be to know where I was headed. Who I was, what I was heading towards, and who I was going to be. It was like I was at three forks in the road. One to the left, one to the right, and one backwards. I was losing my footing.

There is a time right when you are about to drift off to sleep. You are thinking normal everyday thoughts. To-do lists, what my sister said earlier that day, what to wear when I finally get somewhere I can change, how good a shower would feel, how my sister told a story of the time we were held hostage in a forest, and now we were eating donuts in her backyard. And those normal everyday thoughts turn into a weird dream-like state where you aren’t asleep but not awake. Those offbeat, mismatched thoughts were how I slept when I felt relaxed enough to close my eyes. Never really resting.

The quiet settled around us again.

“Do you want to try the purple crayon?”

The little girl hadn’t said much, but I was the same way. We were watchers. The kind of kids who learned early not to interrupt but somehow ended up knowing more than anyone else in the room.

I must have been staring off again because she giggled. “Are you daydreaming?”

How did she know?

I’d been fidgeting with my crayon, so maybe I did need a change.

I giggled too. Partly because she was adorable, and partly because of the irony. Change.

The truth was I wasn’t making sense to myself. Visiting my past only stirred up things my mind had forgotten but my body hadn’t. After the last incident, the latest trauma on my roster, I found out I was sick. When I told my therapist I was good at blocking things out, she said, “Really? And how’s that workin’ out for ya?” She had my kind of humor, sarcastic. And she wasn’t wrong. It was, in fact, not working out for me.

So here I was. Move backwards to the past. Stay the course, do the work, make the appointments, walk in my own quiet strength like I always did. Or I could move ahead and figure out what I wanted to be when I grew up. Funny how as grown-ups we never really feel like adults. We just have more bills and less fun.

My thoughts started scattering, slipping away from me. Maybe I’d dozed off. Maybe I was just exhausted. Then we sat there, a motley crew of three, and me with three moves ahead of me.

There was something strange about how easily we fell into rhythm.

I was enjoying myself with the little girl. She was well adjusted, witty, and sweet all wrapped up in a tiny package. It felt natural to bond with her and 3AM. She even took her turn at coloring. Before we knew it we were all trying really hard to make the images bright and beautiful. She told us a story about herself when she was younger. She had a long stay in the hospital but didn’t elaborate as to why. Only that someone brought her coloring books. At first she thought it absurd. “I’m a grown woman. This is for children who actually enjoy art.” But she had tried it and gotten hooked. She winked at the little girl like she got it. The little girl grinned back and suddenly I was the outsider. I’d better hone my crayon skills if I was going to keep up with this crew.

The three of us sat together in one of our quiet moments and the little girl pointed outside. “Look, it’s getting light out.”

We all stood and turned towards the window. It’s true. Everything does seem better in the morning. I felt calmer. Like this decision I was making wasn’t as complicated or deep as I’d thought. Something in me shifted. A weight the size of a boulder had been taken off my shoulders and set aside.

I’d learned a lot about trauma and knew I’d let them define me. These days, I own myself, not some event from the past. What had been my past and the potential for the future somehow felt invigorating. The three of us would separate soon and I understood I could do that with my life. Separate old me from future me.

I was smiling like some weirdo in a Lifetime movie but before I could stop it…

“You figured it out, didn’t you?”

“Stop doing that. You’re freaking me out. But to answer your question, let’s just say I’m closer.”

As we watched, the sun came up and the sky was filled with brilliant colors. It rose bit by bit. The light was almost painful to look at after all of this artificial light. It was a bit painful as my eyes adjusted but I could somehow tell they were craving natural light. That’s the thing with airports. There is nothing “natural” about them.

Looking back, I should have clarity and a nice memory of three unlikely strangers passing the time together in an airport. A place that takes you places. My clarity was only in that I couldn’t say if I was in or outside of the dream-like state for most of the night. I could have dreamt it all or none at all. I knew that I appreciated them now. We had connected. We all saw ourselves in each other. It was surreal.

We took our spots in line and the passengers began to move forward inch by inch. I was the only one of the crew left standing in line. I must have missed it when the others got on the plane.

The gate agent lady cleared her throat, holding out her hand. “Ticket, please.”

I stood at the threshold of the jet bridge. I looked at the ticket in my hand, then back toward the airport exit. I took a deep breath and changed the course of my life.