Last March I found myself sitting in SFO late at night, waiting for the umpteenth hour for a flight home to BOS after a business trip in LA…
Ben had shown me around the Bay Area only a week prior, and I’d flown in through SFO. The airport marked the beginning (and eventual end) of a wonderful vacation and first non-business related trip to Northern California.
So, naturally, I was actually excited to stop at SFO at first - It seemed like the perfect cushion between the shock of Los Angeles and all that it once meant, and my life as it is now here in Boston. I thought all the warm memories from vacationing with Ben would be enough to give me some good vibes on my way back. Same coast, same state, same airport, same terminal… Failproof, right?
This time however, I was on business, it was cold and dark, I didn’t know a soul there, and Ben wasn’t there to pick me up and take me home. Yes, I was at his homebase, but the fact of the matter was, he was asleep on the East Coast a good 2,700 miles away. Suddenly I wanted nothing more to be back in Boston, back on EST.
It’s strange how strongly I associate places with people, yet, without Ben there, San Francisco was just as faraway and foreign as it had been before he’d ever shown me around. And I’m not sure why, but I chose this song to listen to while sitting outside the International Terminal thinking all of this through. This song has become one of my favorite late-night contemplative songs ever since.
(People, songs, places…They’re all irrevocably intertwined in my mind. Ben, SFO: This one’s yours.)
