by Jennie Svogar

Created on: August 06, 2008

The interesting people in an airport never cease to entertain and amaze. You can't turn your head without seeing something heartwarming, ironic, or even just plain weird. Take for instance the terminals in Denver, CO. A major hub for domestic and international flights, the feel of the airport is unique and never boring.

From the moment you step off your flight from somewhere normal like Omaha, Sioux Falls, or Missoula, and hear the recorded announcement of "Terror Alert Orange", you know this is a different world. Then as you emerge into the Concourse, your five senses are accosted by the other people around you.

First there is the quintessential Asian Filmmaker, complete with laptop and Handi-Cam. The best part, though, is when you see the Hewlett Packard employee badge and realize he is using a Macbook Pro for his film editing while waiting for his connecting flight-from California, if your stolen peeks at his laptop screen are any indication.

There is the single mother, expertly maneuvering her four children through the terminal, and later the single father failing to keep track of his five-year-old daughter as she makes a beeline for anything shiny.

There's the uniformed flight attendant, rushing through the Concourse, who looks ridiculously like Latoya Jackson, as well as the frazzled men and women clearly just off the Red-Eye flights and moving through the pathways like rumpled zombies.

The young woman repeatedly checking and rechecking her ticket is only surpassed by the young man across the gate, repeatedly checking and rechecking the young woman.

The best thing in the entire airport, however, is the men and women in uniform, finally returning home. To look out across the terminal and see a young man of no more than twenty, still in fatigues, with a smile of pure delight... it will bring tears to any eye.

I was blessed with the opportunity to speak with such a man who happened to be on the same connecting flight as myself. When I asked if he was coming or going, a far off look came over his face for just a moment. Smiling broadly, he looked up at me and told me he was coming home. When that word left his lips, he became choked up, tears welling in his innocent brown eyes.

Home. That one word can stir such a primal need in anyone, a longing to be where we belong, where we fit. To be home. It is the one thing the millions of globetrotting travelers share in the isolating world of airports, bus depots, train stations, and even just out on the open road. Whether your adventures in this wide world are just beginning or coming to a close, we all have a need for home.

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