Loneliness

My brother Rob dropped me off at the airport early in the morning on Tuesday and after making my way to my airline counter, I joined the queue of passengers taking the same plane from Birmingham to Toronto.

A small woman with sparse brown hair asked if this was the line for Toronto. I told her that I hoped so!

I turned away from her and looked around, interested in watching the other people in line. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught movement. A man who appeared to be in his early 70's but tall, upright and well built, with white hair, closely cropped, and pale blue restless eyes in a face that was unlined with slightly puffy skin. He was very talkative and active and in conversation with an airline staff who was, for some reason, directing him out of the building. He went, and  I watched him as he paced awkwardly behind the floor to ceiling glass panes, ill at ease, not seeming to know what to do with himself. It seemed unnatural for a man of his maturity to be banished outside, something seemed off-kilter.  "A nervous flyer," I thought, "maybe had a few drinks."

On the plane, I settled into my seat and he was there again, a few seats ahead of me on the right-hand side of the aisle. He was fidgety, troublesome to the flight attendant who was assisting him. "I go through withdrawal symptoms," he said as she tried to settle him down.

The passenger who was seated beside him was reseated elsewhere. As he left, the white-haired man said, "You wouldn't want to sit by me; I'd do yer 'ead in after two minutes."

Periodically the flight attendants intervened, dissuaded him from buying alcohol. He loudly protested that he couldn't understand why he couldn't pay in cash. He cast about, looking for someone to engage in conversation but most of the passengers in his vicinity studiously kept their eyes averted.

Partway through the flight to my surprise, he found someone to talk to. It was a child, a little boy, seated across from him. I noticed that he had a gift for connecting to a child, and they talked, from then on, for the rest of the flight.

As we landed in Toronto and taxied down the runway, he and the boy, who was named Andrew (we could all hear the conversation,) tried to spot as many planes from different airlines as possible. It sounded like they were both having an equal amount of fun. He, an adult, had entered the world of the child. Children don't see things as adults see them. Children don't judge.

The 7-hour journey was over though; we were there. The plane came to a halt and the Seatbelts On sign went off. People stood and opened the overhead luggage bins.

I heard the man say, "Well, Andrew, goodbye. See you again sometime." It sounded like he was leaving a friend. 

I wondered where he was going and to whom. Was he a grandfather coming to see his family? How would the visit go? If there were children it would be good, but maybe bittersweet for the adults.

Sometimes you wonder what brings a person to the point at which your life intersects briefly with theirs. He wore loneliness like a garment.

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.
- Eric Hoffer