There's a restaurant near my house my family used to frequent. I've spent hours there, either with those immediately related to me or as part of a larger group of folks with similar interests -- namely the participation of our children in high school sports.
It was (and still is, from what I can tell) a friendly, boisterous spot, with lots of large parties and folks dropping in on tables and conversations. It's also one of those "first-job" places, so even if we didn't know the diners, chances are we had a connection to the person bringing us our food. For a while, one of those people was our youngest daughter.
One reason we spent so much time at the restaurant, on a per-trip basis anyway, was the Lovely Mrs. Smith can seldom navigate a room without seeing someone she knows.
And since she is the friendly one with the great memory for names and faces in our marriage (one more job I've seen that I don't want), well, we got sidetracked a bit. Which was part of the fun of the place. We were all members of the same club, part of the same team.
I was in the restaurant the other day, picking up a carry-out order, when I looked around and realized I did not know a soul in the place. Not the people, not the staff. It was as if I were in a different city populated by folks who share a language, a set of similar interests and nothing more.
See, the nature of some places is that they cycle through groups of people, Clientele changes not with the small numbers on the calendar but the big ones. Ice cream stands, near-campus bars, that breakfast place you always used to go to before soccer. It's still there. You're the one who's gone.
I mention that because school is starting. And, increasingly, that means a lot more to some folks than it means to me.
What it used to mean was a combination of dread and anticipation, shopping for clothes and shoes you hoped will make it at least a semester (and knew probably wouldn't), that scroll-long, incredibly detailed list of school supplies you had to buy (Really? The index cards have to be unlined? Really?) and the knowledge that the party was over and the calendar was suddenly going to kick into gear.
Now? Football season is starting. Oh, and traffic is going to get worse on the morning commute. Watch the crosswalks, stop for buses. No conference calls in a school zone.
The last of our children will start his junior year of college in a bit. Since he's a boy, and since we've all seen this movie before, there will be no giddy car caravans to his latest new home-away-from-home. No endless stream of plastic bins full of clothes and food and all the things we hope will make it seem to him like he's just upstairs and not miles and a soon-to-be life away.
As someone who spread the "having kids" thing over several years, I used to do what we call the Dirty Math -- "how old will I be when (fill in the blank) happens?" Now, most of those "happens" have "happened" and the Dirty Math is replaced by the "Probably Nevers," the growing list of things that were terribly, terribly important to us that we'll probably never do again.
High school football game? Unlikely. Filling out those reams of forms, most of which seemed to be a document acknowledging you read the previous document? Yep, someone else's job. Parent-teacher conferences? We won't have to hear "he/she ... likes to communicate ..." in the same way ever again.
When it comes to the start of school, anticipation is being replaced by nostalgia. And the realization that, for a lot of people, things remain the same. You're the one who moves on.
The Lovely Mrs. Smith and I used to start every school year with pictures of the progeny in the front yard. This year we'll likely start it with a selfie from another country we'll be visiting, briefly. Time moves on and you've got to keep moving with it or you'll miss the show.
But that doesn't mean I also won't miss that old restaurant. No, that's not quite right. The restaurant is still there. It's just "the place" for a different set of people now. Not us.
And every now and then, for the briefest time, on my way to somewhere and something else, I miss the old us.
Commentary on 08/16/2019