September 2010. This is kind of a weird one, but the whole point of this list is to assess what really matters in the scheme of things. While in Granada, we were fast approaching a nice long weekend, during which a great many of our friends were going to Oktoberfest, and we all decided to go to Paris. Due to ridiculous bus schedules, we were forced to bus to the Malaga Airport the night before and sleep there before our morning flight. The travel plans themselves are unimportant, what’s important is the “We” to which I am referring. Since our first afternoon in the lobby of the NH Madrid, this group started to create something powerful, something, that even while writing about it, twists my heart with nostalgia. Will, Abby, Tara, Machi, Katelan, Mikaela and myself, dubbed various names by other students in our program, were simply, tight. We arrived at the airport, determined how early we could check in, and settled into a spot for the night, close to the windows near where we would enter the terminal. All of us were forging our makeshift pillows, breaking out our bocadillos and talking about Paris and whatever else, and I started to get this feeling. I know this feeling is not unique to me, so many people can feel at home in the weirdest of places because of who they’re with, so I only aim to try to explain those moments. We drifted off, we stretched and walked around, and read and listened to music and relaxed and as I sat, curled up under sweatshirts and jackets, it hit me. That drafty speckled tile floor and those jarring florescent lights, and the strange echoing silence of such a massive and empty place felt so warm and so full and so pleasant because I knew I had gone with the right people. No other group could have made that practically sleepless dozing night as wonderful of an experience as it was. Their drowsy laughter was like music, familiar songs whose lyrics I simply knew, their half-lidded smiles were peeks at the sun, little moments of feeling like home that combined into something bigger, something that I felt was a brief second of detachment that could have been hours and could have been the blink of an eye. I wasn’t in an airport, I wasn’t anywhere except exactly where I wanted to be. Nothing is owned like the things that you choose for yourself, and nothing validates that ownership like the feeling that your decisions will yield something truly special.
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