Airports make me sentimental.
Although I’m aware that many people are flying to attend a conference in Omaha or something else equally as dull and daunting, when I’m sitting at the gate with my overpriced coffee or at the bar with my overpriced beer I only think about those who are flying for love…because so many of us are.
The love of travel. The love of a spouse. The love of a child. The love of adventure. The love of oceans. The love of mountains. The love of hidden gems. The love of live music.
I have traveled for all those reasons. However, for me, it is often the love of sitting on a couch with a friend that compels me to buy a ticket, shuffle through security, and sit in an uncomfortable seat by someone I pray just wants to read their book too.
These are the trips I take to be restored and recharged. There are no jam packed itineraries filled with time schedules and reservations. There are no expectations. In fact, sometimes we just sit on the couch – allowing the nearness of each other to be enough.
I have been fortunate enough to take two such trips so far this year. I’ve gotten to sit on soft couches with my even softer places to land. With them, I can just rest my head on their shoulders, and know that they will allow me to pat their knees much longer than my husband or daughter will tolerate. We can cry at a movie, knowing that the tears are really for us. We may even catch a side by side nap.
We cover ourselves in a warm quilt of ease and trust and unload all that’s weighing us down, and then we shake the quilt out, and laugh until we are no longer making sound. Of course, I wish these women lived on either side of me so that we could have coffee in the morning or hit happy hour after a hard day of work. However, since this can’t happen, I’ll fly for love – the love of them, the love of us, the love of the family that we choose, the love of trust, and the love of sitting on couches with friends.
Soshally Awkward
Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.
