#40

She was putting her suitcase on the conveyor belt in the security line. Ahead of her, a young father and his son had placed their bags and and coats in bins. The father started to take his shoes off and the son made a fuss about not wanting to do the same.

“How old are you?” A TSA agent asked. The child held up five fingers. “Then you get to keep your shoes one then.” He said, giving the child a thumbs up.

The boy threw his five year old fist in the air and yelled “Yeah! I win!”

Some people behind her chuckled at the boy, and she too found herself smiling at him as she was pulled out of her own impatience of the slowly moving line.

“Ma’am!” She looked up to see the TSA agent pointing to her. “Ma’am, please follow your child through the metal detector.”

“No,” she started to say. “I’m not with…” But the TSA agent didn’t seem to hear or care and barked his command once more. So she shuffled in her socks to join the boy as he walked through the special metal detector used for children that was next to the one everyone else walked through. And as she neared the threshold of the machine a different life flashed before her. What if walking through meant walking into a new reality? What if on the other side she was suddenly a wife and mother? Had she had been daydreaming another life as a single woman for so long now that she almost forgot her reality?

By the time she was on the other side, the father was already calling the son over and was handing him a small blue backpack in the shape of a shark. She watched her life walk away, still dazed and unsure.

“Ma’am.” The TSA agent was speaking to her again. She thought he might be apologizing for his mistake, that he would reassure her where she was and where she was going.

“Ma’am, is this your bag? You can’t bring this lighter on board.” He held up a plastic yellow lighter she recognized as her own. Her own, the her who smoked on occasion, who was not married, who had no children.

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I win.”