Airport

Airport is an amazing place. Here all the life stories converge to a single arrival or a departure. Tears, laughs, and dreams come true. People bring all emotions with them, hopes, nostalgia, memory, hatred, resentment, and love. In this dramatic setting, one encounters her past, present and future. I waited my mom’s flight and felt like my mom waited for me at the gate of the kindergarten. Some people run into tears when they see their beloved faces, some yield at the top of their voices, and some wave their hands like crazy. Suddenly people of different colors speak a common language, the language of love and reassurance. As usual, the Air China flight is late. Most of the passengers had come out before I finally saw my mom. She looked great in her dark green shirt and she even managed to get herself a cart to move her luggage. I waved to her and she smiled right away, as she smiled at the kindergarten gate. Many years passed by and we felt the inner connection of us reverberate again. We took a supershuttle and it was around the rush hour of the day. But she looked cheerful and the 13 hours flight was not even make her tired.

The summer heat started this week and the locals were so jammed. I remembered my mom used to take me on her bicycle back seat when I was young and rode for an hour to go back home. The chilly wind of Beijing and mom’s warm back made such a contrast, and sometimes I was fallen into asleep on our way home. Now the sunshine of late June afternoon makes Queens and Manhattan like hotspots, and now it is me who tour my mom of my city in another time zone. Mom laughed and said, the time was almost the same as Beijing except we were 12 hours apart. We have been lived 12 hours apart for 5 years and this is the very first time we share the same time zone. It was great! As the shuttle run across Queens Boro Bridge, I showed her the streets and places in middle town. People finished their work and started to walk home, and the street was full of tourists. Mom was surprised by the doges in town, and she found the dogs were huge here in States. We traveled on 57th Street from east heading west, across the Park Ave, Madison Ave, Fifth Ave, the lower side of Central Park and up to Amsterdam Ave. On our way, I showed her the Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center, the Central Park, the St. Johnes the Divine Church, and my university. Although it took almost two hours to come back home, but we had a nice and quick tour of the middle-upper part of the town.

Jin and Leifan were very nice and invited my mom and me to dinner. I managed to make two cold dishes and we had a great dinner together. Mom brought the latest news from China, and I found Jin know so much about the current status of our country and I was almost out of touch of reality. My world is much narrowly focused, around my dissertation and my reading. Mom brings me back to everyday life and makes me feel at home. My small room has never been so crowded, but it looks like a home and even smiles like a home. I have to change many things, such as switch my computer to Chinese setting, change SINA instead of GOOGLE as my homepage. I guess this is about happiness, heavy but real.