Virgil

I've got to start bringing my iPod when I fly. Virgil had extensive mouth hardware that made his mouth dry and saliva thick. His hands were dirty and thick but looked strong. He was friendly in a classically Midwestern way that made it impossible for me to make a point of returning to my book in a way that didn't invite further conversation. He jokingly invited me to divert my vacation plans to join the rest of his family for a reunion and seemed honest, decent, and a little simple. Virgil's wife died from cancer about a year ago and he's lonely. He's been listening to a lot of talk radio hosted by self-help gurus and trying to figure out how to make himself happy. He asked me what I thought about all of that and I told him I thought it was BS and that those people make a living out of making you feel bad for not always feeling good. We talked about all sorts of random stuff and he unwittingly said something that made me feel better about the expensive and impractical purse I had bought.

I didn't expect for Virgil to ask to call me sometime, "just to talk." I couldn't reject him from the angle he approached me from. I could have actually, but I didn't. My compromise was giving him my work number so that I would probably miss his calls and had reason to keep them short or just not return them. I could not figure out what to say when he asked for my number. Here was this sweet, old, retired guy who just lost his wife (ironically enough, Virgil is white and his deceased wife was black--their son was sitting right next to me) and he, like all of us, is seeking companionship. If we had met when I was 23, I would have called him, not for romance (God, no) but simply out of obligation to be there for someone who needed company, certain that God would not have placed this person in my path if He had not meant for me to respond to Virgil's need for companionship. For a flash, I considered Virgil as the grandfather relationship I've never had. We could go fishing, he could give me advice and encourage me, we could go to family reunions and I could be a part of a family that celebrated family and welcomed me warmly. He would teach me how to take vacations and encourage me to spend what I work to earn without guilt. I wondered what the point of Virgil was, I'm always looking for higher meaning in strange encounters like this. I wonder if pulling the thread of that encounter would somehow lead to the person who will meet my own need for companionship. Stranger things have probably happened. Still, I'm hoping that he loses my number because it will be so much easier if he never calls at all because I won't call him back and I know I'll feel bad about it.