Musings in the Arrivals Area
By Belinda I drove towards Lester B. Pearson airport to meet friends from England, praying my way through the rush hour traffic and potential wrong lane changes. Overhead in a cloudless blue sky a plane drifted steadily upward, arrow-like, angled toward heaven. Its journey seemed lazily peaceful and solitary in contrast to the busy concrete expressway below. At the Arrivals area in Terminal 3, I scanned the screen of incoming flights: Amsterdam; Cathay; Helsinki; Montego Bay and Port of Spain--my mind went to those places. I saw that my friends' flight from the less exotic Manchester had landed just 20 minutes earlier. I guessed that it would take them at least another half hour to get through customs, but although I had brought a book to read in case the plane was delayed, there was no way I could focus on reading. What if I missed that moment when the doors parted and they came through, eyes searching the crowd for mine...