Picking Up the Check

 

Last night, Geoffrey and I went to dinner at a steakhouse to celebrate Christmas and New Years. We split a ribeye and ordered two side dishes that each contained a stick of butter. When we asked for the check, the waiter came back and said, “Your bill has been taken care of.”

I looked at him like he was speaking gibberish, and asked him to repeat. He had a smile, and said, “Someone paid your check.”

G and I looked at each other in disbelief, and we had to triple check that we heard the waiter correct. I said, "That's never happened… I feel like I should give you a hug!” 

Then the waiter opened his arms and I gave him a hug. G and I called my parents after we got in the car to tell them about this crazy event. My mom said, “Maybe they thought you were famous.”

But my dad chimed in, “Then they’d definitely make her pay.”

My mom has an investigative eye, she’s read every Sue Grafton book, and concluded I have a secret admirer. She told me to go on my dating app, maybe someone recognized me and sent me a message. I explained to her I haven’t been on the app in two weeks because it is dreadfully boring, but she convinced me, and when I went on it was exactly the same as when I left. 

The two people I’m messaging are likely con artists because we have yet to meet up in person even though I’ve brought it up multiple times. There was a third person, but I had to stop messaging him because the lack of direction was highly suspicious. I asked him some questions, and he wrote back, “Walk outside and look at the sky, that is something to write about.”

All I said was, “You’re a bot, right? Just a head’s up, this message is coming across as neurodivergent and not poetic. I have no idea WTF you are talking about. You lack focus.”

He wrote back, “I am just a tech CEO trying to raise my kids.”

I replied, “Sure you are.”

G and I went out to the special dinner because the week before I took his sister to Florida and she really got the royal treatment living an only child life. We went snorkeling, parasailing and to an alligator rescue. G was supposed to go, but the morning we flew out, he started barfing and his dad picked him up. So G had a staycation with his father, and he was perfectly happy to miss out on the plane ride.

I don’t like flying, it is very stressful. You can’t sit with your kids anymore, unless you want to pay an additional $150 a ticket for each leg of the trip, it would add up to a first class ticket price. The airline upcharges you for everything, where pretty soon, they’ll charge you for a seat belt and the emergency oxygen mask. Then there is all the anxiety of hoping there aren’t delays where you need to talk to a ticket counter person who has the personality of a jail warden.

Even though I festered in the stress of airplane travel, everything went smoothly. On the flight from Fort Lauderdale to Houston, I sat next to a woman who was going to Vegas with her husband and two kids in their early twenties. They were scattered around the plane because that's how you fly these days. She was chatty, and after I got her bio she pulled a Cuban sandwich out of her bag and started to eat. She said thanks for talking to her during takeoff because it gives her anxiety. I put in my headphones and started a show on my phone, but then she kept talking.

She was seriously stressed out by one of her children. As she took bites from her delicious looking sandwich, and swept crumbs from her chest, she explained that her daughter just graduated college, was going to med school in the fall and her boyfriend is the son of a construction empire, rich as fuck and on track to tack over the company. Then she explained how her son was in and out of rehab, changing his major again, and continues to choose a girlfriend that rips his heart from his chest and jumps up and down on it.

I felt bad for the son, who was sitting behind Kiki, and could have been overhearing his mom’s oversharing. All I said to try and console her was that lots of people fuck up in their early twenties. Sometimes a flip will just switch when they realize they want to have a family. 

She was trying to find some kind of understanding as to why her two kids turned out so different. She said, “Always have your kids’ friends hang out at your house.”

That was what she boiled it down to. Her daughter and her friends hung out at her house, but the son would go hang out at his friends’ house. I wish I would have told her she was doing a good job. The fact that she was putting her kid in rehab, and concerned, was worth a big pat on the back. Having a mother that can worry herself sick is actually really helpful for a young adult going through some major fuck ups.

I could have told her that my mom lighting a candle, praying for her kids, could really throw one of us into a rock bottom, but those rock bottoms turn out to be as fortuitous as winning the lottery. In retrospect, I realize I didn’t say much to the woman. She talked and talked, just getting everything off her mind.

Like a rock bottom, the best part of traveling is the joy I feel when I get back home. It is like opening a Christmas gift full of glistening jewelry. Since being home, I washed the walls, and did a major thinning out of stuff. G and I changed light bulbs and we spackled in the hole in the wall from the front door handle. This is actually my son’s idea of vacation. He loves being with his pets and keeping up the house. I raised my kids the same but they are wildly different. I think about the lady on the plane, the advice she offered so carefully. Some value is invisible until you live with it for a while, like a bill you never see, already taken care of.