Pride and Parents

My body hurts. Badly. Everywhere, and that includes my head. My eyes don’t want to open, and they don’t really have to yet, atleast I don’t think they do. The humming of lawn mowers innocuously blare in the background, and my thoughts are that it is still early. Yesterday was another 18 hour day, and I keep thinking that pretty soon this is all going to catch up to me. Maybe it will at some point…..
I have since , crawled out of bed and into my car and headed to work for our monthly bar clean. It is over now and I sit at the bar and reflect on the past week with a mimosa, my laptop, and golf whispering in the background behind me.
I have lived here for nearly two years and am well on my way to making some of my dreams a reality. I wanted to be a restaurant owner by the time I was 30 and, with hard work, dedication and a little help along the way that dream has been realized. My parents came into town for the first time this past week, and while anxious and somewhat emotional, I was incredibly proud to show them my first restaurant. I cooked them lunch as they wandered around the restaurant inspecting the art, perusing the menu and talking about what was, partly mine. I constructed a couple sandwiches for them, plated them with chips, walked them over and explained exactly what they were, and grabbed a seat next to Cheryl, my adoring and ever gracious stepmom. They ate, and we caught up on life - how things were going back home, how I was liking life here and the whole time they seemed to be smiling at what I had made for them. It is hard to describe the emotion that shot through me on that first day my parents came into my restaurant. If nothing else, it shows me that I am doing the right thing with my life, and that moving up here, while risky and uncertain, has paid off. I can rest now, knowing that my parents are proud of the steps I am making towards the future, but I won’t rest, because this is only the beginning. It seems ironic to me that, the very same day my dad and Cheryl came in for lunch to see the restaurant, was also my Mother’s Birthday. She would have been sixty, and though she couldn’t be here to see it, I know she is looking down with a smile.
The rest of the day I showed them around town, and drove the streets of the beach community where my Dad and Cheryl both grew up, though none of it had any sense of familiarity to them. All of the nostalgia has been replaced with over-commercialized streets that are lined with tourist ridden sidewalks, shops and restaurants. We had dinner and drinks and enjoyed each other’s company, which came all too brief, when we hugged at the end of the night.
The next morning as I was putting the final touches on my Cream of Mushroom soup for lunch service, Cheryl wandered up to the door. Her and my dad were on their way to the airport, and wanted to say goodbye one last time. I hugged her, as my dad smiled from the rental car in front of me, and we embraced for a couple of moments. I then thought about our wonderful time yesterday, what exactly it meant that they came to see me, and how this emotion could be translated into the future. My dad beckoned her, and I offered my thanks for them stopping in. I told her to wait momentarily and I ran into the kitchen quickly, poured some of the soup into a carryout cup for her, blew them a kiss, and wandered back inside where the hot kitchen was again waiting for me. We got busy over the next couple of hours and it wasn’t until after the lunch rush that I got the message, “Soup was delicious Kiddo.”
All along I knew this was the right move, I just needed this to help realize that. The future is mine, and the possibilities are endless….For now, it is back to the cutting board……
CH.