Visits to Marlboro Airport provided many hours of pleasure for a mom and two small children

Was it a child’s innocence or a mother’s naiveté? Like most families, we have our daily rituals in the car ride home from school. Stepping over pretzel crumbs and candy wrappers in our well-traveled minivan, my three children would excitedly tell me all the new discoveries they made and learned that day. Their tireless excitement about new subjects always inspires me. I can’t remember back far enough to know if I felt that same thrill to experience a spelling test or to learn multiplication.

We would drive a little and then replay a familiar dialogue. It was always the exact same conversation, almost like we were practicing lines for a play.

One day, though, several months ago, I realized that we weren’t rehearsing and it wasn’t a game at all. I noticed that when we turned onto Route 79 from Tennent Road, the two girls continued their chit chat and bantering, while my son fell silent.

About a minute up the road, he would ask the same question that he had asked hundreds of times before, "Mommy, can we go the airport today?"

At first I thought it was just the cold damp March air I was feeling, but then I realized that I felt a very genuine and very real sense of sadness from my little boy. He wasn’t trying to be funny. His sweet young voice was completely serious. His voice held the hopefulness that one day I’d reply "yes" and that Mommy could make the "No Trespassing" sign go away.

His voice held the hopefulness that we’d once again slowly drive down the bumpy quiet airport road and see the rabbits darting in and out of the overgrown bushes. It’s been about a year-and-a-half since our last visit to Marlboro Airport. The jagged remains of the runway are being removed and the last planes have left the skies, but somehow my children still feel a connection to that gone, but not forgotten little airport. And I realized that so do I.

I would take the kids there almost every day. Then they were roughly 2, 3 and 4. Each visit would be as exciting as their first. They would try to spot a plane taking off or landing, pretend to fix an imaginary plane, wave to the pilots, or just roll around in the tall grass pondering who owned which plane and what enchanted destination they might be flying to.

We’d practice our numbers by reading the sides of the planes or we’d make up fictitious names for each plane based on the picture or design (i.e. the "spider plane").

The friendly mechanics and pilots always stopped to say hello to us. Our family friend, Pilot Jim, would on occasion take them up for a ride. They’d go home at night excited to tell daddy just how many planes they saw take off and land.

There was a surreal calm on those fields. Was I really in the heart of a bustling township of 40,000 people or were we beamed over to some tranquil remote peaceful island? Just being there always drained away any tensions of the day.

I’ve traveled to 42 countries in my lifetime and witnessed a lot of sunsets in exotic places, but some of the most mag­nificent sunsets in the world were right there over the evergreens at Marlboro Airport. Enjoying my children’s company and seeing their joy with each takeoff and landing are the memories which are in­delibly etched in my mind.

This article has no hidden agenda. It isn’t about political motives or anyone selling the airport out to developers. It’s just one mom’s stream of con­scious-ness thoughts about a familiar old airport. My older daughter’s first word was "airpa." My son’s was "fly." My youngest daughter knew the airport be­fore she was old enough to talk, but not surprisingly it was "pwane."

My children are a little older now. We stay busy with homework and after-school programs, but my son still proudly displays his framed picture with Pilot Jim’s plane next to his bed. We miss you, Marlboro Airport. You’ll always be in our hearts.

Cheryl Elice

Marlboro