Listening

By Andrea Scarpino

 

Monday morning: exhaustion. 10 days of non-stop work for my university’s twice-yearly Residency, of faculty discussions and seminars taught, of student meetings, dinners, of answering questions, negotiating personalities, taking notes, of being attentive, expanding my ‘to-do’ list. I’m exhausted. Ready to go home. Ready for quiet. Ready not to speak with anyone.

 

In the hotel lobby, an elderly woman wears sandals despite the cold temperature, glittery gold nail polish painted on each toe. On the lawn outside the hotel: dozens and dozens of robins, red chests flashing in muddy green grass. I look across to the hillside where I saw two deer days before.

 

The airport van arrives, and the driver loads my suitcases for me. An older man, wearing a green Tartan hat and scarf. As soon as he starts the ignition, he’s talking: he used to live in a house right where the hotel is now, went to the Air Force and when he returned, his house was gone, new buildings gone up. He points to other buildings as we pass them, what this one used to be, how his high school days brought him up and down these streets.

 

A moment of flashing anger—I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to listen to stories. I’m exhausted. I want silence. But the driver’s scarf—a plaid my uncle would wear. His hat, a hat my father would have worn. Compassion, I think. And I ask a question. And the man unfolds his life: four years in the Air Force, then 25 as a firefighter, mostly in downtown Cincinnati, but later in a quiet suburban firehouse. Then early retirement before he turned 50. A second career as a college women’s volleyball coach. Then finally, his wife’s illness. How he drives the van two days a week. How he loves to see his grandchildren. A lifetime summarized in twenty minutes. His smile in the rearview mirror.

 

When we reach the airport terminal, he slows the van—we’re barely moving—to finish his final story. ‘I just want to get to the end,’ he says. Then we’re stopped, and he’s pulling out my suitcases, setting them on the sidewalk. And I want to hug him, to take his hands in my own.

 

‘I hope I’ll see you again,’ he says, and I nod. ‘I’ll keep your wife in my thoughts,’ I say.

 

And he drives away. And I think the rest of the day about this man, his Tartan scarf and hat, the cinnamon gum he stuck on the dashboard when it was clear I was willing to listen to him talk. And I think about what I would have missed if I sat stone-silent in the backseat, determined to be exhausted, determined not to engage. Compassion, I had thought. But really what I meant was, listen. Listen.

 

Nick Flynn writes, ‘Perhaps everyone has a story that could break your heart.’ Perhaps. Perhaps not. But how will we ever know if we don’t show interest enough, if we don’t step outside ourselves long enough to listen.