Late Lunch

October 4, 2021

While sitting at *Jitters, a beautiful young woman walks by and smiles at me. The last time that happened, I was ushering the third base line at Jammers Stadium. I turned and looked high up into the stands behind the plate to see this attractive young woman smiling and waving madly. I knew I was getting old when my first reaction was to turn around to see who was behind me that she could be waving at. 

This time however, I just smiled back and waited as she came inside and right over to my table, greeting me with a big smile and a hug. No, it wasn’t some young thing making a pass at an old man. I had driven to North Chili to buy snow tires advertised on Craig’s List, and was meeting my granddaughter for a late lunch. “Hi, Beepa,” she smiled. Her words were like honey to my ears. 

Usually when the grandkids are around, Linda is the hub of their conversation. She’s a natural at small talk. “Chatting,” she calls it. “You don’t know how to chat,” she tells me, and I have to agree. I run out of things to say pretty quickly, so when the whole crew is around, I tend to fade into the background while she asks questions and listens to their hearts. This afternoon, Linda wasn’t there; she would be proud of how well I chatted. And listened. Hearing a grown, married granddaughter talk of life, work, and love filled a place inside me I didn’t even know was empty. When it was time for her to go to work at her second job, I left saddened that it was over so quickly, but full of gratitude for the relationship we’ve been able to have for all these years. When she was a baby, Linda and I watched her and her older sister most weekends, just because they lived nearby and we could. Those formative years forged a bond that persists today, having returned to us as the Scriptures say, “pressed down, shaken together, running over.”

*a local coffee shop in North Chili, NY.