I watched that girl, that girl at the airport. She couldn’t keep control of her bags – they kept banging against her legs. She was trying to run, trying to go fast, but the bags were slowing her down.

Why’s everyone got to be in a hurry? “There’ll always be another train,” my mama used to say. Because that was back in the days when trains were a thing. Big as a building, loud enough to make your head split open, hissing to a stop, people scuttling around.

But there’s always going to be another plane, too.  Even when there’s a crash or nine eleven, there’s gonna be another plane. You might have to wait a bit, but it’ll come. One thing you can count on is that people are always gonna want to go to some other place than where they are. We are a restless species. Like hermit crabs.

And just like that girl, we got to bring our stuff with us. Got to leave, but not without the things that make me who I am. Folks go camping to get away from it all, they say, then they bring all the stuff they wanted to get away from along with them. I think it’s a kind of loneliness.

You’re just the same, my granddaughter Livy would tell me. You’re no different. And she’s right. But I have a different perspective. I see people running to catch planes every day, while I stay here, sweeping and such for my eight hours, then go home, next day I start all over again. I just throw another abandoned McDonald’s cup half-full of ice into the trash. 

And that’s all anyone can really do, right? There’s going to be another McDonald’s cup or three to pick up tomorrow, but all I can do now is keep order in this small piece of the world, in this small particle of time, until it’s all over, and the world ends or I do.