Everybody, Always

The small man looked up slowly from my driver’s license and handed
it back to me as if it were his. He didn’t say a word, but I could see his
eyes well up. He took a couple of small steps toward me, then he wrapped
his arms around me and put his head on my chest. “I’m Adrian,” he said
into my sweater. I’ll admit, it was more than a little awkward. But there
we stood, just the two of us, slow dancing at the front of the TSA line
while 150 business travelers who were late for their flights watched. This
was the beginning of my friendship with Adrian, three minutes at a time.
We said our goodbyes and I was already looking forward to my next trip
to the airport and the next chance to learn a little bit more about him.
A few days later, I got my chance. During our next three minutes
together, I found out about Adrian’s wife of over forty years, Patricia. He
spoke about her with a hushed reverence, the kind reserved for the pope.
She was obviously the love of his life. We hadn’t finished talking about
Patricia, but the line moved, so I did too. I knew we would pick up our
conversation where we left off the next time I got to the airport.
On subsequent trips, I found out about Adrian’s son, a daughter, a
grandchild, a brother, and a previous career he had with Aeromexico as
an electrician. We began meeting at my house to talk about life and love
and Jesus. Our families began spending Christmases together. It was
terrific. One year, Adrian gave me a double-matted photograph of the
main library in Mexico City and told me all the books in there couldn’t
contain what he had been learning about God in the past few months.
I learned Adrian was saving up money for a down payment on a small
house. He told me how he spent the weekends swirling a sign over his
head on a downtown corner, advertising apartments for rent to earn the
extra bucks he’d need to swing the payment. I teased him about what
might happen on a windy day as all one hundred pounds of him were
blown across the street and into a field.
During one of our three-minute meetings, Adrian updated me on his
dream house. He’d saved up enough money and thought he had found the
perfect one. It would be modest by most standards, but the way Adrian