It was 19 years ago today, right about now, when a very conservative-looking gentleman walked into the restaurant where I was waiting tables on weekends, and asked for a table for one. We chatted off-and-on though the night while he sat scribbling on index cards, filling one after the other and then stuffing them into his shirt pocket. It was at least an hour before I realized what was so odd about him – aside from the index cards . . . he never smiled. Not once. He came back the next night and I asked if he worked at Milford Rivet (the address on the newspaper he’d left behind) because I knew everyone there, aside from the new owner, as my entire family had worked there for decades (including me on summer breaks from college.) He replied, “Um, I own it.” Wow. He was my brothers’ boss. I think it was that night when I mentioned I was an “animal person” and he replied, emphatically, that he was not. He was back the next night, and the first time I ever really saw him smile was when he asked me, before he left that evening, if we could be friends even if he didn’t come in every night (turns out he’d eaten there for lunch every day for the past year, but I never worked that shift.) “Sure,” I replied. 19 years later, married for 13, 11 grandchildren, hundreds and hundreds of animals rescued from terrible fates, long hours of hard farm labor, no vacations, no money (it all goes to the animals) and he has gone from a dapper man in expensive suits to a farmer who squeezes in his actual job between rounds of chores. We pass out at the end of each day, exhausted, and wake up before the sun to start it all again. But when I ask him if he’s sorry he came in to the restaurant for dinner that night and asked for that table for one, he always, always, smiles when he answers me, and tells me it was the best moment of his life. I love you, David Melina. I don’t know how you put up with everything that comes with me, but I’m glad you do. Tonight, when I’m done teaching, we can sit in the Adirondacks, drink a glass of wine, and pretend we made it to the Cape this year, after all. I will be the one sitting in the chair right next to yours, smiling back at you.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 20:55:54 +0000
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