Airports can provide some of the best people watching in the world. So many people, from so many backgrounds traveling to so many different places. You can readily know those folks who travel by air for business. They are the ones who seem most hurried and most bored. There are those who are perhaps flying for the first time or at least have not traveled in this way often. They have a certain look of excitement or apprehension on their faces, in the way they carry their bodies. There are families, young lovers, exhausted older people. All share a space for a short time before jetting, literally, off to some other place that will receive them.

Because airports are good places to observe people, they are also good places for people like me who have a tendency to spin an imaginary tale about those I see. This is a ‘habit’ I employ not just at airports but on the train, sitting in traffic, in the coffee shop I frequent. Observing people is a kind of hobby. Not a very ‘Minnesota’ thing to do but It is a difficult habit to break and I am not sure I want to anyway. Always up for a good story, whether factual or imagined, I don’t have any plans to stop this practice any time soon.

Yesterday I spent a longer time than planned in the airport in Columbus trying to get home to Minnesota which had been hit by yet another snowstorm. Unlike most people, I don’t mind sitting in the airport, waiting for a flight, even one that has been delayed. It simply provides more people watching time. Yesterday’s experience did not disappoint.

Immediately, I was taken by a young boy, probably six or seven years old, who was obviously flying for the first time. He and his mother had been there quite some time because they had been scheduled on an earlier flight that had been cancelled due to the snow. He was wearing his disappointment and his excitement on the outside, jumping around, trying to contain himself, but not being very successful. His mother was so patient and kind. I loved her for this. She simply walked with him, kept showing him new things he might have missed, re-directing his energy in ways that would pass the time.

Two women, also to have been on the cancelled flight, were giving off the vibes of people bored beyond words. They were out of things to occupy their time. Others around them were on cell phones. One selling real estate.( It was easy to hear his booming voice!) Another person was making arrangements for someone who was quite ill, which seemed to be the reason for their travel. My heart went out to him.

As our flight was called to board, I made my way to the line full of the stories that had surrounded me. But the observation and the story making was not yet over. Looking ahead of me, coming down the long corridor, my eyes were met by three uniformed officers, sheriffs, in their brown stately hats perched on their varied leveled heads. Walking along,they ringed a young woman being escorted through the airport in handcuffs. My heart seemed to stop. She stared straight ahead with a look of complete resignation on her youthful face. Her pale skin showed the marks of a recent outbreak of acne and her brown hair hung limply to frame her lack of emotion. Ripped capri jeans and a sleeveless blouse, exposed green and white straps, hinted at the warm days we had been experiencing. I tried to take in everything about her down to her dirty, slip on tennis shoes.

Who was this young woman and what had she done? Where was she going and to what? This young one, someone’s daughter, someone’s child, was being moved through this group of travelers in what seemed an act of humiliation and shame. But maybe that was only my storytelling mind speaking. All I knew was that my heart broke for her and I wanted to follow and do something, anything to try to help mend whatever had been ripped in her life that had brought her to this moment.

As I turned to walk forward in the line that would take me home and from this scene, I realized tears had formed in my eyes. I did not know this young ones’ story. And yet I felt a great connection to her. In my head I heard the words of another story. ” When did we see you in prison?” And the answer came back, “whenever you have seen this in the least of my people, you have seen it in me.”