Charlottesville, VA to Chicago, Cardinal, Train No. 51

Paul was standing outside the Charlottesville Amtrak station waiting for the train when I met him. After visiting his son in Florida he was heading home to Charleston, West Virginia. He wore jeans, a light waist-length jacket, glasses and a cap that covered his white gray hair. His posture was bent forward in a slight hunch. He hoped to arrive home at 8:30pm.

“My ex-wife is going to pick me up and take me home,” he said.

“It’s nice to have that kind of relationship,” I responded.

“She’s mellowed out. It wasn’t always that way. I gave her the house and car.”

He told me they have three grown children and that he and his wife have been divorced for eight years.

“I should have waited it out. Two or three years and it would have worked out.”

I asked, “Why do you think that?”

“She joined the Wiccans. She thought she was a witch. Then she thought she was a psychic. I was going to church and she said I was crazy for going to church. I moved out and didn’t go back.”

I’m wondered why he would be revealing this information to me, a stranger at a train station. But a heavy heart needs to heave no matter where it’s traveling.

“It sounds like you still love her,” I hint. Continue reading→