dining with the fam

A blessing tonight. The restaurant where Sam has worked for a few years, the Emerson, is closing soon for a renovation, and he has found another job. We love the place and will miss it, so tonight, we all met there for dinner, Anna, her boys, and I. We know all the waitstaff and they know us, know the boys, who are right at home there. Ben immediately sat on a bar stool colouring and chatting with one of the waiters, while Uncle Sam mixed cocktails.

We had a delicious meal with the best service imaginable. One lovely thing - I'd found out that my friend from the Y, Karim, a young man from Jordan, lives nearby and urged him to drop in sometime, look for the tall tattooed guy, say hello. After many months, he chose by chance to do so tonight, so I was able to introduce him to everyone. A new waiter there, one I'd not met, came up to me and said, "I have to tell you how much I've enjoyed working with your son."
"I'm glad," I said. "He's a good guy." And he is.

And then Ben turned to the nice young couple at the table next to us and said, "I have to go pee now." He often greets strangers on the street - "HI GUYS!" which is such a cheery way to go through life. As we left tonight, he turned at the door and bellowed, "BYE UNCLE SAM!"

It was a freezing, bleak night, but I was warm warm warm as I rode home, noticing, at one point, that I was the only person in the subway car with pale pasty skin. I pity the poor souls who've come from warm climates to make their homes here, at least, on a February day like this. But with the right coat and boots and hat and scarf and mitts, we'll all survive.

Came home to a note from my dear friend Lani, to whom I'd sent the manuscript of the memoir - she was there for a lot of the stories it describes and even appears several times in the book, with her own name. She told me she was glad I'd used her real name, not a pseudonym, because she took so many drugs back then, she might not have known which character she was.

She wrote how much she'd enjoyed the book. I was thoroughly engrossed in this woman's journey. There was a lot of humour (so glad you kept in the cheese tray story), a lot of angst, a lot of joy. The character grew and evolved. She was loveable and I cheered for her. 

Now that's good news! Let's hope one day a publisher agrees. I'm working on the Uncle Edgar story - now have 14,000 words. What it'll end up being, a long article or a chapter in a book of essays, I'm not sure. I need to do research, but that means being in my office, which is nearly uninhabitable with junk and dust, almost all my materials in stacked boxes. But I still have lots of resource material I've been able to unearth.

Tomorrow, another treat: The Play That Goes Wrong, which I missed in both London and New York. I could use a good belly laugh right about now. In five minutes - Bill Maher on HBO. His sarcastic comedy keeps me sane.