Spending time in an airport can have a particular quality. Dimensions and sensations can mutate. Time, in particular, expands and contracts continuously and in a fickle way. One minute you’re two and a half hours early, and the next, you’re in a security line that stands still, only to reemerge from the invasive inspection of your belongings and run like all hell to your gate as the final boarding call comes over the airport loudspeaker. You’ve just made your flight, but now there’s no space for your carry-on in the overhead bins. Shit. You wait while they place your carry-on with the checked luggage. Your plane sits on the tarmac for a half hour waiting to depart.

You see what I mean: spending time in an airport can have the quality of moving slowly through water. There is resistance, until suddenly time accelerates like a stream becoming a waterfall.

When I travel, I first catch up on the most recent magazine issues and leaf my way through quite literally, everything on the stands, from the intelligent to the foreign language to downright trashy. Often in the reverse order.

And then when I’m done, there is space.

A line from a piece I read recently lingers in my head. I can’t recall the author, but the writer observed how the human experience is richer when we can see beyond the tip of our own nose. I live with a close eye to my little universe, and I’m thankful for the occasional beautiful revelations that stem from boredom. It can be a relief to look out.

A middle-aged man in a dark blue suit buys a stuffed koala and a supersized Toblerone. A woman dressed brightly in traditional African garb picks up today’s newspaper. A new mother breastfeeds underneath a pale blue shawl while her partner sits next to her, charging his iPad. A teary phone call. Stories unfold before your eyes if you let them.

A few weeks ago, I was meant to be at the Frankfurt airport for a very brief layover. It became longer than expected, something about a strike at the Lisbon airport so that my flight delayed.

*

I sit by my gate, next to two elderly women. They could each be my grandmother.

I look up from my book and make eye contact with the younger of the two. She is compact and round, with hair dyed the way that my own grandmother likes it – a shade of the lightest brown that looks like a half-made choice.

“Esta senhora quere falar Inglês comigo,” she tells me. “Fale com ela,” she says, with authority, directing me to speak with the woman to her left.

The woman I’m ordered to speak with has white hair, cut close to her head. There are deep lines in her forehead. The skin on her cheeks droops, softly like folds of fabric. Her face is dotted with sun spots. Her eyes are small and bright, brilliantly blue. Somehow she is fresh faced. I imagine her as a person who never wore much makeup. She must be in her 80s. Late 70s at the youngest, I think.

“I’m trying to practice my Portuguese with her,” she says, and points at the woman with dyed hair. “But she doesn’t seem to understand me.”

She has an accent. “Are you Australian?” I ask her.

“I’m from New Zealand,” she says. Her voice is at once playful and uncertain. Her name is Eleanor.

We exchange nice-to-meet-yous.

Eleanor holds a notebook with a red cover, so small that it fits into the palm of her hand. “You see, I’m teaching myself Portuguese.” She leafs through the notebook, page upon page of small penciled translations. “But of course that’s not my main new language. I’ve been taking Italian classes for five months, you know.”

“You must love languages,” I say.

“Oh no, not really,” Eleanor says affably and through a half laugh. “I’m just preparing for this trip. Or two trips really.”

“Where are you going?”

“First, I’ll be in Lisbon. I’m visiting an old friend. Then I go to Rome,” Eleanor says.

Turns out, Eleanor is visiting a pen pal she’s had since she was 15. It strikes me that they’ve been pen pals for over two of my lifetimes.

“You’re so adventurous,” I tell her. It’s not often that the elderly are protagonists in our society. In this moment, I am fascinated.

“Oh, I’m not,” she says. Her voice trembles. “I’ve never done this before, not alone anyway. My partner died, and I haven’t been able to do anything for two years.” She seems vulnerable and at once relieved.

My hearts melts for her. Death must be a lonely place. Surviving a partner’s death must be a parallel type of ending – the conclusion of a particular chapter.

“I stopped doing my acquaerobics classes. It really is a pity,” she said, “because there’s no impact there. No impact at all.” I imagine Eleanor floating at the shallow end of a pool, face to the New Zealand sky above.

“I stopped giving my Wednesday morning yoga classes too. I just stopped. I couldn’t find it in me to leave the house.” Her voice is harder. “My kids spent two years trying to get me out of the house,” she explains. “So I finally did.”

People now gather around the gate and are lining up to board (on an entirely separate note – I have no idea why people do this before boarding has been called – we are all subject to our boarding groups, no? Pre-lining up does not make the process quicker. But I digress).

“Well, I’m glad about this delay,” Eleanor remarks. She is innocent, and her relief is palpable. “I was afraid I wouldn’t find my way here on time.”

“To the gate?”

“Yes, find my way to this gate. This airport is massive, you know. Did you have to walk down those stairs only to have to walk up again? It wasn’t easy with my suitcase, but I managed. I was afraid I’d get lost in here, and end up sleeping at the airport. But then again, they don’t want you here overnight. Ultimately someone would have put me on a plane.”

A young couple walks by, each with a twin in arms. They look Middle Eastern.

“One day, we’ll all be that color,” she tells me. “You know, we’ll mix, and there won’t be whites, we’ll all be the same shade of brown … Anyway, do you have children?” Eleanor asks me.

“I don’t. Do you?”

Eleanor has four kids, three daughters and one son. The daughters all live in New Zealand. Her son, the second child, lives in Japan.

“He works in Creative Consulting, and is married to a bright, really bright girl. I mean, really smart. She’s a university lecturer.”

“What does she teach?”

“She teaches English, but real English, not just how to speak it. She studied linguistics. She’s truly, really bright. Anyway, they don’t have children.”

I studied her face for signs of disappointment, but her expression was blank.

“My son asked me a few years ago, ‘What would you think, Mom, if we decide not to have children?’”

Eleanor looks at me, as if she were confiding something of the utmost importance. “You know, Japanese society is becoming undone. The women don’t want to have children any longer. I guess why would they? Small apartments in Tokyo and all? Oh, I don’t know. So I told my son, ‘Life’s got a whole lot to offer. What do you want? Enjoy what you wish to from it.’”

I tell her I love Japan, and that my husband and I were recently in Tokyo. I say I’d love to live there some day.

Eleanor had, in fact, lived in Japan. “When I was young. When Edward was there for work. I was at home with the four kids. It was a special time.” She smiles.

“I was a ski instructor in Nagano. I don’t know how I ended up doing that. I don’t really know how to ski.”