Secretive automatic doors conceal those just arrived. In irregular intervals they fleetingly reveal some profile, a familiar back, but you have no time to make contact. They, absorbed in finding the right luggage and you, alone with a longing and a silly smile imprinted on your lips.
I avoid catching the eyes of those around me. I fear that I will read something in them and I will start to cry – stories of sons and daughters who after having spent years abroad they finally return home or of lovers whose eyes even though not seen have not been forgotten. Something always happens to me in front of these automatic doors. Maybe it’s the reunion that stirs something in me; something that separation cannot stir.
You see, the sadness of separation is something you experience on your own and you cannot share. Those who leave carry the sadness with them like a hand luggage which, incidentally, they get to open only after they arrive at their destination. For them there is a whole journey between the separation and the feeling of loss that overwhelms them the next morning when they wake alone. It’s as if the journey suspends time for them. Those who stay behind, however, keep the sadness like a present which they get to open immediately. The minute they wave goodbye they feel the loneliness and the loss come crushing on them, and as if dizzy they find themselves walking the distance between the point of goodbye and the parked car. The sadness of separation is something you experience alone. The joy of a reunion, however, you share, you face it head on, and that is overwhelming and touching.
The automatic doors continue to play their harmless game. Each time they slide open a small adrenaline dose finds its way through and you jump. Who will exit now? Like celebrities they cross the gates and all eyes fall upon them trying to spot the right one. The celebrities too try to make eye contact. Even if no one awaits them, they are still searching – their eyes revealing some deeper need. Who knows, maybe in reality it’s this that gets me by the arrival gates - the unconscious expression of a deeper need to belong to someone and somewhere.
