Mile High Layover

Boulder, CO – Spring 2000

(phone rings)

Yo Danny!

Hey Dad, what’s up?

Did I wake you?

It’s ten in the morning, I’ve been up for hours.

I’ll be in your neck of the woods later today. I have a layover in Denver.

Ah. I’ll come meet you.

You sure? You don’t have class?

Not on Wednesdays.

Do you ever have class?

Not on Wednesdays.

Why would you? I assume you have studying to do.

Definitely! And I plan to read the Israeli-Palestinian conflict book you sent me a while back.

Yeah right. Anyways, gotta go. I’ll email you my flight details.

Sounds good. See you later.

I rolled my eyes and hung up the phone. My dad’s call did wake me up, but I refused to let him call me out for sleeping late on a weekday. Ball breaking aside, I was excited to see him. And while I know the feeling was mutual, I suspected he saw this airport meetup as a logistical challenge for his dimwitted college-aged son to solve. Denver International Airport is a 45-mile drive from Boulder and at the time, its circuitous route took you on a tour of too many congested freeways, all devoid of helpful signage. It was easy to miss an exit and become hopelessly lost while trying to decipher your handwritten turn-by-turn navigation notes. MapQuest was still a year or two away. I also did not have a car, so getting to the airport would require either sitting on a bus for two hours each way or bribing my roommate (with a burrito) to lend me his prized Pontiac Grand Am. I chose the latter.

In addition to my transportation quandary, I was also broke as I had blown my $145 paycheck from my campus job on a new adidas track suit, beer, guitar strings and other necessary provisions. Being an Economics minor, I quickly computed this little airport trip would cost around twenty bucks. I wondered if it would be tacky to ask my dad for some money when I saw him later that day. Never mind, I would figure out a way to get the cash without asking him. The logic, or lack thereof, that I would find a $20 bill somewhere between Boulder and Denver’s outskirts felt sound at the time.

My roommate had a reputation for being a shrewd negotiator, but I knew he could not pass up a free meal. After an intense negotiating session, he agreed to let me borrow his car under the conditions that I fill it up with gas and add guacamole to his burrito. Filling up the Pontiac Grand Shitbox was a reasonable request but the burrito enhancement was just a dick move. We all know adding guac costs extra, hence the stern warning one gets when ordering at Chipotle. It’s an extra buck and a half, okay?

With keys in hand, I headed to the airport with a full head of steam. Leaving a half hour earlier would have been more prudent but my 20-year-old self was not known for being planful. In fact, I took pride in employing the “I do my best work under pressure” philosophy in all aspects of my life at the time and for some years after. In hindsight, it did not do me any favors in my academic endeavors, nor did it really work in situations where time was a factor, like aviation timetables.

Against all odds, I made it to the airport with minutes to spare before my dad’s flight took off. And since this took place pre-9/11, I zipped through security and all the way to his gate, unfettered! My jog down DIA’s Concourse B graduated to a full sprint when I realized his was the last gate; this touch of Murphy’s Law felt appropriate. Winded from the run, I found my dad at the end of the concourse. He grinned while pointing to his watch as if to say, “cutting it close, eh?”

We chatted for a few minutes before he headed out. It was a nice, unexpected visit, and I remember hoping he left with the impression that I was working hard and no longer the slacker he used to harangue in high school. In other words, I wanted to assure him his costly investment on my out-of-state college education, was not in vain. After all, I had just gotten myself to the airport and was confident that I could turn around and go home once I revised north to south and east to west on my handwritten navigation notes.

The image of my dad waving at me as he boarded his flight was seared into my brain that day. I can still picture his sensible L.L. Bean attire, and how I thought his navy-blue blazer revealed his lack of fashion sense. Surely, he did not own an adidas track suit. Whatever symbolism was in play was not lost on me when 18 years later, my sister and I walked our grief-ravaged mother through the very same airport concourse, coming to terms with the unfathomable idea that our dad just passed away on a Mexico vacation, one week shy of their 49^th wedding anniversary. Denial and shock from the previous few days had started to give way to a punishing and unwelcomed reality of a life without him. I knew I would be okay, but would I ever be able to shake these feelings of abject misery?

The memory from nearly two decades earlier was unexpected, but provided some much-needed comfort as I waited for my flight home. I was amused thinking back to the comedy of errors in getting to the airport that ordinary Wednesday afternoon, just to have ten minutes of face time with the guy I tried to make proud. I could not help but wonder if returning to this same unremarkable spot possessed a kind of deeper meaning. I tried to dismiss it as a coincidence one experiences when frequently traveling through this country’s busiest airports. Instead, I focused on the feeling I had when I was 20, that I wanted him to view me as a man. It was then when I realized you do not truly grow up until you face adversity … and grapple with mortality.