Call Me Ishmael

“There’s something poignantly lonely about arriving at an airport with no one waiting for you,”

I thought to myself as I waited alone outside Door 5 of the United arrivals at San Francisco International Airport.

I reminded myself to write the thought down for later, its melancholy reflectiveness too relevant to let slip away.

Granted, I stood there waiting for a car service to pick me up and take me home, so cry allll the rivers, I know.

And yet, as the mothers picked up their daughters and husbands bear-hugged wives and swung children into car seats, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of longing and obvious absence.

Now that I travel for work, I find myself absentmindedly looking for you in airport terminals, wondering where you live, if you still work there, if you ever wonder about me. Thinking that if these walls weren’t so thick and if memory weren’t so powerful, perhaps you very well could have been bear-hugging me, your hand on my knee as we drove away.

It’s quite strange to realize you know nothing about the person you knew everything about for so long.

Anyway.

A high school marching band descended upon my waiting spot like a herd of really loud teenagers, and my view of any oncoming black sedans was obscured. From the throng of encased tubas, I heard a voice –

“Ms. Haas? Olivia Haas?”

He was impeccably dressed, a handsome man in a skinny grey suit and black cashmere scarf, and as he opened the trunk of the black SUV I let the feeling of luxury compensate for any residual sadness.

“Hi, yes. That’s me.”

“I’m Ishmael,” he said.

And away we went.

I never know what to expect with drivers — will they remain silent despite my attempts to be pleasant? Will they engage, and how much? The elitism of these thoughts is too much for me as I write the words. How fancy that I should even wonder these things.

Anyway.

He was from Morocco, a ten-year-ago transplant to San Francisco found him in a 9-to-5, having earned his bachelors in Business with studies in Computer Science. We shared a mutual love for the Bay Area.

“You have a famous name,” he said, after I told him I used to work in Hollywood.

That was nice.

I don’t remember how exactly, but at some point the conversation turned a bit more personal. He was divorced, his ex-wife having been in the Peace Corps for two and half years, a Bay native who wanted to move to Guinea. I found myself relaying the story of my particular loss, and even tried out my little opening line on loneliness.

“You know, loneliness is the highest level of freedom,” said Ishmael.

“You have the freedom to do whatever you want, go anywhere. Whatever you want. Free.”

And suddenly it struck me how not only was that true, but I was very much neither alone nor lonely at that moment.

I became aware of jazz playing from the radio. In fact, all of my senses perked up. I felt…calm?

I’m much calmer now in general. The angry, anxious person you knew has been replaced by someone who likes wearing neon green Nikes and taking dance breaks at her new job in an industry she used to judge. Who doesn’t necessarily need any one person…for anything, really. I’ve been to movies by myself, sat in restaurants for hours, driven long distances, and gone grocery shopping for meals prepared for one.

“Very true,” I responded.

“It’s just… I wonder sometimes if I’ll ever find somebody else who will care about me that much,” I half joked.

Actually it was the opposite of a joke. I really do wonder that.

“I’m a very rational person,” he said after a moment.

“For me, the world is one plus one is two. It’s science.”

Sounds familiar, I thought, thinking of you.

“But you know?” he continued. “This is the thing that is different. There’s no explanation. We can’t explain this.

But I know someone new will come for you. That is the thing in this world we can’t explain.”

I half smiled, as the car sped past those batting cages we had been to off the 101.

“Look it’s like this,” he went on.

“You know, maybe this guy was a thousand to you, right? But how do you know there’s not someone who’s a thousand and one? Or a million?

It’s like those people who have a hamburger and say, ‘This is the best hamburger in the world.’ How do they know that? They could have another hamburger next week and change their mind. New best hamburger.”

The Rengstorff In ‘n Out came into view.

Do you still eat a lot of fast food?

“Life is about discovering. So long as we breathe, we keep discovering.”

“It will come.”

Our conversation continued until he dropped me off, and it struck me that had you been the one to pick me up from San Francisco International Airport, I would not have had this conversation with Ishmael. Sure, a lot of other great things might have happened — wonderful, ordinary things that I miss, like doing the dishes together, like flopping down on the couch and putting your head in my lap, like just looking at you — but instead, I had connected with a new human being, one whose conversation inspired me enough to sit down and write instead of unpacking, whose grey skinny suit and black cashmere scarf will stick in my mind when I feel lonely.

And maybe then I’ll feel a little less lonely.

Maybe instead I’ll feel free.