“Your number is just about up,” our server said. My mother and I sat in a teeny-tiny cubby-hole of a booth in one of the only restaurants opened on Christmas – a fancy hotel downtown. Our server had a perma-grin on her face, not a really pleasant smile because it seemed to fall short of really reaching the edge of her lips, let alone her eyes. It was a look of oh-my-god-please-let-me-make-it-through-this-day-and-why-are-all-these-idiots-here-anyway?!
She had interrupted our conversation so neither of us really absorbed what she said.
I smiled up at her. “Pardon?”
“Oh,” she said, flustered for a moment since I had caught her midstep away from our table. Without slowing her step, she muttered over her shoulder toward me, although she was in front of the next cubby-hole, “I was just letting you know that your number is just about up.”
I thought about that for a long time.
My number is just about up?
I am hoping that is a good thing. I am ready for my number to be up.
This morning I sat on the couch, watching my only daughter tear into her Christmas gifts and surrounded by my mother and sister, both who were seemingly feeling as displaced as I was. My sister for good reasons as she had come down to Utah from Idaho Falls to spend a little time on her own and in good faith that her husband and two young sons would be joining us on Christmas Eve. No such luck. Blizzards swept in all over Idaho and Utah just as they were setting off to travel to Salt Lake and they were snowed in for sure, trapped in Idaho without their Momma or wife.
There were no gifts under the tree for any of us, other than my daughter and my brother’s dog. I am house/dog sitting while my brother is in Hawaii with his lovely wife, basking in80 degree weather in their ocean front house. Yes. That was a sigh you heard. A sigh of… I’m not sure what, this year. Discontent, perhaps.
I try to be all politically correct about gifts. If you have read my Meditation, then you know that. However, my political-correctness evaporated this morning and left in its wake a misty sorrowfulness that seemed to sweep me under tow. It has been eleven Christmases, actually, since there have been gifts just for me under my tree from someone who wants to be with me. Eleven.
And, while I do not relish the thought of lingering on this subject – and, still, seem to be doing it a lot as of late – I am tragically aware this year that I am alone. And, damn it! Yes, I know! We are still alone even when we are in a partnership. Yeah. I get it. But it sure seems to make things a lot more understandable and doable and possible and warm when there is a live, human body next to you taking life on with you blow by blow.
So, I am ready for my number to be up. I just hope I’m not in the restroom when it does…
