Layover, or Intermission?

When my Parents moved to Suburban Chicago, O'Hare was a military airport. Soon, it evolved into a hub for commercial traffic. O'Hare Airport was a few miles from our home. Growing up, I would look out of the big, bay window in our living room, and I could read the airline names on the tails of the planes as they descended to land.

A visit to the airport was exciting. My Dad would take us there to watch the planes arrive. On the way home, he sometimes stopped at one of the Howard Johnson's Oases over the Illinois Tollway, and we would have a lunch or a snack.

I think about those planes, coming and going, and the people on them, dressed in their 1960s finery and traveling between amazing places. How did they feel when they were between spots? Were they living in the moment, on a brief layover, or did they feel like they were experiencing an "intermission," between the more important acts of a play?

I am working through another intermission now, wondering how the next leg of a trip will go. Pondering that, I remember that it's best to smile when one briefly lands.

It's a deliberately mixed metaphor.

O'Hare Airport, September 1961. I smile for a landing.