OFF TO KOREA

Yesterday, I took my son to the San Francisco Airport for a year's tour of duty in Korea. He stood and smoked a cigarette before entering the terminal. We piled his duffle bags on a cart and took the elevator down to the terminal. I noticed the travelers dressed in shorts and flip flops, jogging suits and jeans and immediately this pang of jealousy , an overwhelming feeling of envy for thiose who can just travel, go some place because they have the money and they want to, came over me. Every time I board a plane it's now a big deal, the trips I once took when married are now scarce, taken on some income tax return, purchasing a ticket to some where, any where, just to go, and then spending all the money I have taken along and returning home broke. When I am experiencing these envious fits , let's call them travel envy, I am also reminded that some people
have never been on a plane, and I have been fortunate just to have been able to fly to Europe, go to Hawaii, Mexico, Bahamas, Canada, etc; but many of those trips took place many years ago, and the memories are now a little dusty, like my mind at the moment, and saying to myself, you have been fortunate just to have been able to go , is sort of like saying you need to clean your plate, there are people starving in Africa. Yes, there are people starving , and in too many places than I can currently even recall or spell the names of, but if our children clean their plates everyone still starves. If I am appreciative of trips taken twenty years ago, that's great, but I still see the jogging suits and hiking boots and want to go. We ate the expensive airport food, I hugged him goodbye, and I sarted missing him before he even walked away. A year in Korea to avoid another year in Iraq. I had been seeing him every day for the past three and a half weeks, and the thought of sending him away hit hard. It was difficult not to think what if he, myself, his wife and my youngest son, were just going to Korea
as tourists, to visit? It's an amazing class distiction in America , more pronounced than ever. Airports filled with predominately
white people and Asians. I paid my eleven dollar temporary parking fee, exited out to the freeway, and thought immediately of Christmas, hoping that perhaps he will get leave for the holidays, but fairly sure it won't happen.