One of the only times as an adult that I spent time with "Andres" was New Years 1981, when I was in the midst of my MMus studies in England, and he headed to Spain for a college study program. I took a train from London to Paris and on to Madrid (changing trains at the Spanish border because in those days the gauge of the tracks was different.) After a day in a train compartment with a large family and a basket filled with live chickens, I managed to meet him either at the train station or the airport, I don't remember which. I marvel that in those pre-email times, one could manage such meetups at all! We made our way out to the suburban home of a Spanish friend of mine, and used it as a home base for a few days of travel around the countryside. We were both on a shoestring, and we basically survived on beers and tapas, this being the era when you could get the beer and accompanying snack for somewhere around 50 cents. Andrew spoke fluent Spanish, was easy to travel with, and almost impossibly friendly with strangers.
Even at his memorial service, this was what everyone talked about. Andrew was able to befriend a stranger in about ten seconds. It didn't matter whether he was in line at an airport, talking with restaurant staff, or bumping into someone on public transportation, he always, always took the initiative with people and nearly always found something in common with them. He might, for instance, talk with a waiter in New York City and say, "where are you from?" If the server said, "Lima, Ohio," Andrew would exclaim, "I rode my bicycle through Lima in 1985, and had the best fried chicken of my life at a restaurant on Main Street!" It would inevitably turn out that the young man's uncle owned the restaurant, or he had waited tables there, or that his dad ran the hardware store next door. This was never a lie or a joke on my brother's part -- if there is such a thing as "six degrees of separation," Andrew seemed to have only about three degrees of separation from each person on the planet. He could find common ground. My other brother quipped that whereas most of us avoid crowded rooms of strangers wearing name tags, this was Andrew's equivalent of a candy shop. Everyone in that room was a potential friend. This doesn't mean that he maintained these thousands of friendships, but just that for one moment, this stranger wasn't "strange."
I am sorry that I don't have this gift. Although I am comfortable greeting strangers, and can easily say "hi" or "how's it going?" or speak to a group, I rarely get up the nerve to strike up a one-on-one conversation on the fly. Since Andrew's death, I am trying a little harder to do so. In wake of everything that is happening, it is interesting to think: what if we all saw that person next to us as a potential friend? What if it never occurred to us that they could possibly be an enemy?
I miss this about Andrew, his humor, and I guess most of all, seeing him at the helm of a sailboat. It is from him that I seem to have inherited a delight in at least the wonderful metaphors of the water. Life's winds brought his boat "about" unexpectedly, and I can only hope it is into a port filled with delightful strangers to befriend.
