Sweet Monday

Monday was a statutory holiday in Canada.  On Monday morning, my step-dad called to see if Ken and I would like to give him a lift to the airport.  Our favourite all-day-all-night breakfast-and-souvlaki joint is out there, so we hopped in the car and went to pick him up.  Fortunately we only got two exits down the highway before he realized that he forgot his cellphone on his kitchen counter.  There was bound to be something.  He's a true absent-minded professor.  Fortunately Ken drives fast.  He pulled a wicked U-turn and we went back for the phone, and still made it to the airport in time.

Another good reason to go to the airport is because it has a monorail.  That gives us an excuse to sing the Simpsons' monorail song.  "What about us brain-dead slobs?  You'll be given cushy jobs!  Monoraaaaaaaaaail, monoraaaaaaail, monoraaaaaail!"

After dropping off my step-dad we sat in the diner with our breakfast platters, watching air traffic through the big picture windows.  The closest runway was being used for both take-offs and landings, so after we ate we drove a couple of blocks down Airport Rd. and parked in front of the TD Bank.  There is a grassy boulevard between the parking lots of the local businesses and the road.  In front of the bank, the coffee-and-donut shop, and the Wendy's (with it's giant BACONATOR COMBO sign out front), families making a day of it had set up blankets and folding, aluminum-frame chairs in the path of the runway.  Every few minutes another airplane on final approach roared overhead, across Airport Rd., and then touched down seconds later on the other side of the airport's chain-link and barbed-wire fence.

We spread out a flannel blanket in the shade of a small tree.  I took my shoes off.  The sky was a sapphire vault.  The clouds overhead were wispy.  At the horizon off to one side, they were piled in high, folded peaks, like whipped cream.  I lay on my back and saw a white dragon above me, its back arched, breathing fire, drifting in the blue.

Under the next scrappy little tree, a young family was spread out on a blanket.  The mother cradled her toddler in her lap, rocking him gently, smoothing his fair, silky baby-hair over his forehead.

A young man somewhere around the age of 20 paced around with a big still camera, pointing its long lens at the sky, snapping pictures of the planes as they tore past.

We stuck around until the wind changed and the airport switched to a different runway.  It wasn't a long stay, but it was enough, and a much better Monday than most.