He said to me this morning.
“If there is one thing I realized is that I won’t win in this lifetime.”
Dan and myself have worked our butts off, literally, to make his endeavour work. Backbreaking, human placating, building repair nightmare, equipment malfunctioning, financially drowning hours of mental, physical, emotional and oh yes, spiritual abuse. We have listened and adapted and shifted to the yo-yo advice, the outlandish wants and demanding needs (both in our personal lives and our business). We have done our best to right the wrongs that infuriated people enough to hit the world wide web with ridiculous mean-spirited prattle, and all but gave up when the corrected wrongs burned another and were spanked silently with texts or emails. Really humans? One blinking step in my gel cushioned, non-slip, hideous soles and you would see things soooo differently! I swear it!
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not always like this. For the most part, I enjoy the service industry, especially when I don’t fuck up an excessively modified breakfast-it’s almost lunch order, on those busy line up days. It is beyond the moon-spirit solid to get through a whole hour of infinite nuts and find all left contentedly brim-full, grin on their faces, lingering giggles, memorable chats and good old fashioned tips (eg. TIP: ice cream scooping is THE hardest thing to do all day long, so yes, please tip your server). It is a goosebump raising, ravishing feeling of success when you see a cheerful familiar faces come through that door for more. That tingly sense of camaraderie when they joke with you, get up to assist you when they see you need it most, search you out for a quick wave ‘Im here’ or ask for you to sit a spell because they know you just need that infinitesimal, delicious second without judgment before the next onslaught of hungry, hot travellers cram themselves in. Rare, these things, like tumbled nuggets of gold.
For Dan, his only ambition was to run this diner in this bonny spot of Eden. Have family and friends, young and old come visit, work, eat and play. That warm, social, home-like topographic point, like a beacon, where all from far and wide are called. And maybe, just maybe, to make a decent, nothing extravagant, kind of living to retire on. To finally get that accomplished feeling back after losing so much to someone who deserves so little all those years ago. Maybe too, a little bit of a cushion under our hard worked bottoms just for kicks. For me, oh how I wanted this for him. He has and always will show his unselfish love through the kitchen. Anyone who knows him knows this, but without the proper instruments, well, it turns a body weary and cold. Changes how you act, how you view your world and treat those you thought you could trust.
Today I am lost in spirit. My normal pink, punky funk is blue.
Today, I signed my way out. I will be working in an office again, something I feel I’m more suited to. It comes with security, something I haven’t had in months. It also pays me and dear GOD and GODDESSES in all the Heavens above and beyond, it is so much easier to deal with the amaranthine of absurd bunk when you are getting paid to stomach it. But today, I also say goodbye to a season I have lost. The summer I watched go by through a wall of windows, through faces I won’t remember, through plans we did not make. Today, I take the beating of the losses and join my man in his sentiment.
Final word:
I know there is something extraordinary waiting in the delightful candy cane scented air for us. That we had to go through this land-mine of tippy toe, shell crunching, jumper frog hell to get to the other side in order to be handed what we fully deserve and that we may just win one battle in this lifetime of war together.
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