Restaurant Gal

When I first moved to South Florida, I lived in complete and abject fear that I was destined to share my home with the dreaded Palmetto bug–aka the Florida version of a giant, disgusting cockroach.

“Everyone has them, battles them,” I was told over and over again by Fort Lauderdale friends.

Not this gal. I kept everything a bug would crave locked up in airtight containers–from dog food to sugar to salt and pepper. A cardboard box or container had less than a five-minute lifespan in my house before being tossed in the outdoor dumpster. Same with grocery bags.

The one time a Palmetto tried to make my place hers, she met an awkward death at the end of an almost-useless can of bug spray.

“They’re going to get in sometimes. It’s the tropics,” my great guy would calmly and annoyingly say when I threatened to torch our Key West house rather than live in what felt like the Palmetto Bug Hotel.

My discovery and purchase of a gallon-sized jug of Ortho “Home Defense–MAX,” however, was nothing short of a life-changing experience. I became empowered by the hand-sprayer attachment that allowed an accurate sure shot behind the stove and under the refrigerator. I became the hunter instead of the hunted based upon an “effectiveness guarantee” and a promise to “keep on killing” for months in between sprays.

It worked, sort of, in that we kept the invasion down to a weekly attack. But the Key West house, like Key West itself, was just another train-wreck movie that constantly replayed during our brief attempt to call the place “home.”

Now that we are back in the Upper Keys, however, I realize that those pesky Palmettos merely represent the front line of what lurks in these parts. Sure, they try to breach the outside perimeter I drench with my liquid gold “MAX” every two weeks (obviously, I don’t believe in waiting months between sprays), but they simply encounter the interior barrier that I re-saturate almost as often.

Which means, the only bugs I see in my place are the dead ones that never make it past the door jam or window sill.

Turns out, however, that my beloved chemicals don’t do much to scare off the rest of the Keys menagerie that clearly exists to torture me.

“I’m sure it just came in when we moved in,” said my great guy when he confessed that he had killed a scorpion in the guest bedroom while I was at work. Not very comforting, since he killed said scorpion three months after we moved in.

“How about that one?” I said a week later, pointing to the large black shape with the curly tail that dangled from the top of the opening to our outdoor laundry closet. (As an aside, what is it with Keys homeowners who think placing laundry facilities outside–so you can sweat to death in the heat or get drenched in a downpour as you fold your work clothes–is somehow a genius solution to limited-space issues?)

“What the hell,” said my great guy, who looked a little like a possessed crazy man as he swatted the life out of the thing, while I calmly sipped my wine from my rocking chair on our back deck.

Later, I soaked the laundry closet inside and out with my sprayable courage, even though the Ortho label said nothing about the product’s ability to slay scorpions.

I considered it real progress in my maturation process, however, that I didn’t pack up my belongings and move out the next morning.

“It was just a frog,” said my great guy, laughing, as he shared his afternoon escapade that had unfolded while I was, as always, at work.

I understand how, in most realms, the idea of a slimy frog perched on one’s toilet seat could be considered somewhat humorous. And upon hearing that said frog eluded my great guy for several minutes while it hopped down the hall and into the bedroom, with the dogs in hot pursuit of the thing–and who knew if it was poisonous–the image could elicit a chuckle.

Unless you are me. And every day you notice the ever increasing number of slimy frogs of various sizes invading your backyard and living under your house.

Squirt. Squirt. Squirt. What’s good for the Palmettos is surely good for all the rest of the stinging, hopping critters.

“Please tell me that’s a large mouse,” I said to my great guy one recent evening as I watched a long-tailed creature scurry up the trunk of the too-close-to-our-house-in-the-event-of-a-hurricane palm tree and perch on an overhanging frond and begin a two-minute stare-down with me.

He knew better than to answer that one.

But last night, when the same long-tailed creature got into a hissing match with the dogs, claws bared, I lost my mind and began screaming for my great guy to come outside and save us all.

Brandishing the red cover of our 14-inch grill like a gladiator’s shield, it only took him three seconds to slam it over the still-hissing whatever-it-was and trap it.

“Now what?” I almost cried.

“Take the dogs inside and close the door. You don’t want to be outside for this,” he said, calmly grabbing a two-by-four plank from under the deck.

Oh. Gross.

But at least it’s dead–and gone with today’s trash pick-up.

Squirt. Squirt. Squirt. Can’t hurt to spray a little more of the “Max” around the yard.

Just keep all lighters and matches away from me for a while.

“You must snorkel and fish and be out on the water all the time!” says everyone and anyone who has vacationed here for those purposes.

At the year-and-a-half mark of my living in the Keys, the following pathetic statistics bear witness to my landlocked life here: I have been fishing once, never snorkeled, and can count on one hand the number of times I have been out on a boat.

“We’re going to the Sandbar on Sunday,” said a friend with a big boat on which he lives and a little boat on which he plays. “You want to go with us?”

The Sandbar? On a Sunday? Where, smack in the middle of the ocean, a lengthy strip of visible sand lures boaters by the dozens, their skiffs crammed full of beer and booze and those who will imbibe both to extreme excess?

“Go with them. You’ll have fun,” said my great guy who had to work, as always, on my day off.

The Sandbar? On a Sunday? Where every stereotypical image of the Jersey Shore meets that of Venice, Calif., resulting in a kind of waterlogged, beach-town boardwalk on steroids?

“Good, we leave at 11 a.m.,” said the friend who took my great guy’s comment as my acceptance of his invitation.

Guess I was going to the Sandbar. On a Sunday.

There is nothing quite like being on the water in the Keys. You see everything you drive past every day from an entirely different perspective: That ugly concrete garage backs up to a beautiful bay-front estate; that tiny, nondescript road-side motel boasts an ocean view to die for–and a huge pool.

As you slow here and speed up there, as you take the cut through the mangroves over there, you are continually amazed by how much you never see from shore.

“How about here?” said my friend as we slowly puttered into a spot between two larger fishing boats. His girlfriend agreed, and seconds later the anchor was dropped. We were wedged in with the other hundreds at the Sandbar. On a Sunday.

Dogs floated by on rafts being pulled by their owners. Inflatable coolers pulled up the rear of a line of 20-something guys cruising the shallow waters for 20-something gals. The terrible sound system blaring country music on one boat tried to outdo the terrible sound system playing salsa-style tunes on the boat next to it, which prompted the guy with a tiny skiff and a huge sound system to drown them both out with pounding urban sounds.

Kill me first, I thought, rather than stay here another second on the Sandbar. And never again on a Sunday.

“You’re at the Sandbar?” asked RG daughter, when I called to report my latest escapade. “I saw something about it once on the Travel Channel.”

On a Sunday?

I watched my friend’s girlfriend lounge about in the shallow water on a floating raft tied to the boat, a glass of wine in one hand and a book in the other. Okay, I told myself, get over yourself and enjoy the day.

I plugged my headphones into my ears, played my own music to drown out the competing tunes trifecta, and stretched out on a towel the bow of the boat. I snoozed a little; I relaxed a lot. At the Sandbar. Even on a Sunday.

Three hours, two Gatorades and one slight sunburn later, we were headed back to shore.

“I need a boat,” I blurted out.

“You?” laughed my friend. “Didn’t you say this was your first visit to the Sandbar, and how you are a little afraid of boats and big water?”

“That’s why I need a boat,” I said. “I have to get over all my stupid fears.” And live what is clearly the other major and very cool part of life here.

“Why don’t you and your guy just borrow my skiff tomorrow,” he offered. Because he thought I was kidding about getting a boat.

Whatever the Sandbar may be on a Sunday, it isn’t on a Monday.

On Monday, the Sandbar’s calmer, more sedate twin sister greets a handful of boaters who prefer the sounds of birds calling and waves lapping over that of screeching canned music. On Monday, this Sandbar’s alter ego allows her azure water to teem with tiny fish and maybe a ray or a turtle, or two.

On any Monday, you will be completely captivated by the Sandbar’s unique spell, and you will immediately give in to the notion that if you had a boat of your own, you could explore all the other beautiful sandbars and all the other parts of the close-in Keys waters that, until this day, were something vague and unreachable and simply “out there.”

On this Monday, with me, my great guy and my dogs aboard a borrowed boat, I finally understood what all the fuss about living here is all about.

It wasn’t the prone-to-angry-outbursts, double-Captain-and-Coke customer who reappeared after a 30-day stint “away at college.”

It wasn’t the open-shirted, barefoot customer who dug in his pocket for all the change he had and asked, “Is this enough for a drink?”

It wasn’t the who-knows-when-he-last-showered customer who has a propensity for sharing his oral sex escapades in explicit detail.

No, it was a relatively new regular who can’t drink alcohol because of various legal issues, and who, when asked where she lives, says, “Anywhere I can park my car and not be hassled,” decided my bar was the place for her to spend today drinking water and eating brought-in bulk trail mix.

It wasn’t her lack of a bar tab. It wasn’t my knowing any sort of tip from her was out of the question. It wasn’t her ability to bum countless dollars from other customers in order to blare head-banging music on the jukebox at 10 a.m.

No, it came down to M&Ms. The M&Ms she fished out of the plastic zip-lock bag of brought-in trail mix. The M&Ms she threw at me in order to take my attention away from glancing at the local headlines in the local paper that had just been delivered so that I would pay attention to her.

She didn’t need more water. She didn’t need more ice. She didn’t need anything.

The first M&M bounced off the bar and onto the floor. I didn’t look up and, instead, gave her the benefit of the doubt that she had “dropped” it, albeit three feet away from her and right next to my elbow.

When the second M&M hit me square in the chest, nailing the spot where my dermatologist had recently removed a skin cancer–a spot that is still a tad tender, and one that I will keep covered up until it is fully healed–that I knew.

I knew I was done at this bar. Done with the horrible tips, done with the questionable characters who always seem to outnumber the nice regulars, done with pretending that liking and respecting those for whom I work would eventually make up for the horrible tips and the questionable characters.

Done. Just done.

I can’t afford to be done, despite that I make three times the money in three times less the time at my two other jobs. As pathetic as this job may be in terms of a dollars-per-hour computation, it still funnels some cash to my pocket that eventually blends with the decent money I make at my other jobs, helping to pay the rent, the student loans I took out for my kids, my car payment, the groceries and all the rest.

But at some point, even when you think you’ve hit that point before, you really hit the point where you simply cannot do the job one more second.

Blame it on the M&Ms. Or, as will likely be the case, blame it on a spoiled-brat, princess exterior that my local regulars will likely use as justification for what they will say they always knew: That I was not the best person for this job because I didn’t have a thick enough skin or a Keysey-enough attitude, as much as they said they liked having me around to pour their beer.

Jobs are scarce in these parts at this time of year. Several of my co-workers will step forward tomorrow, if they haven’t already because news travels at warp speed in the Keys–and on this I would bet next month’s rent–to offer to take my shifts and make my so-called “professional” two-weeks notice nothing more than a moot point.

I won’t miss the hour commute. But I will miss some very cool folks for whom I will never lose respect.

I won’t miss the $.25 tips. But I will miss the down-and-dirty-you-can’t-get-more-local-than-this stories I will no longer observe.

I likely won’t miss a damn thing about this job a few days from now.

But I know I will never forget the good, the bad, and the ugly that showed me the gritty layers of life I never otherwise would have known, just when I thought I knew it all.

When you are one of seven children in a blended family, everyone is cast in a role repeatedly played out, despite all efforts to break free and re-create oneself. One sister, for example, was the clumsy one, something of which she was reminded every day, which resulted in continual mishaps that ranged from minor–a bruised knee, to major–a concussion when she fell down the basement stairs. Was she really that clumsy or merely a self-fulfilling prophecy thanks to being continually told she was a perpetual accident waiting to happen?

I was the one who lost jewelry, from the cheapest of plastic toy baubles to my first birthstone ring given to me by my stepfather for my eighth birthday. As the years went by, I was given other rings and pins and bracelets, most of which ended up missing just when my parents would ask why I wasn’t wearing one of said gifts. When I graduated from college, my stepfather told me he wanted to buy me a ring, but, given my history, thought a train ticket to travel across country was a better option. I thoroughly enjoyed the trip and was relieved not to bear the responsibility and inevitable blame for yet another jewel torn asunder from my keep.

Decades later, when my grandmother passed, I was given a gift that left me awestruck–the very old and very beautiful engagement ring worn by her mother, my great grandmother. The ring had been given to my great grandmother by her second husband, when he proposed to her just as the Great Depression had begun. He was a doctor; a patient in need of his care offered him the ring as payment for his extensive services. I am not sure if it was a straight barter, or if he paid a nominal price for it in addition to providing the care. I do know, however, that despite its obvious value beyond anything paid, it felt priceless to all involved and dated back to the 1800s.

“Wear it, enjoy it, love it as she wanted you to,” my aunt said when, during a brief break from the sad chore of cleaning out my grandmother’s home, she gave me the glittering, most beautiful ring I had ever known.

I briefly hesitated. Then I reminded myself that I had managed to not lose my own engagement ring for multiple decades. My wedding pearls also remained secure in their black velvet box, tucked safely away. Surely, I had outgrown my childhood “loser” moniker and graduated to being worthy of keeping this gift that I would ultimately pass along to RG Daughter when the time was absolutely right.

Right?

And for three years I did just that. I wore it everywhere, except at work. I kept it with me at all times when traveling, lest the house burn down or someone burglarize my apartment. When people whom I didn’t know well complimented it, I told them that it was a fake. “Amazing how real it looks,” they’d say. “Yep, amazing,” I would agree, and then change the subject.

Last weekend, after much planning and begging others to cover our shifts, my great guy and I managed to take two full days and nights off together for the first time in months. It was literally my first day off in 18 days and 22 shifts. We didn’t look back as we headed off the rock, booking the pups into Rouletta’s former canine “country club and spa” for two nights, and treating ourselves to an oceanfront luxury hotel in Fort Lauderdale.

As always, I packed my heirloom ring in a little jewelry pouch, along with two pairs of earrings. I zipped it into an inside pocket in my purse and left it there, untouched. When we returned home, I quickly unpacked everything, both of us in a hurry to work night shifts, and I forgot to remove the jewelry pouch from my purse. Two days later, in horror and self-chagrin, I remembered. I dug through my purse, and there it was, the mesh pouch safely zipped away as I had packed it.

Except that it wasn’t exactly as I had packed it. When I shook the contents into my palm, only the two pairs of earrings fell out. Okay, so the ring must still be in my purse, I thought. But it wasn’t, despite my pretty much ripping the lining out of the thing to make sure the nightmare unfolding wasn’t happening.

I dug through every corner and crevice of my suitcase, on the off chance the ring had somehow ended up there, which I knew was impossible. I removed all my cheap earrings and $20 rings and two-for- $30 bracelets from my jewelry box and ran my hands over and over the velvet lining.

Nothing. Nada. It was gone. Vanished.

My heart pounded and I felt certain of two things: that I could no longer breathe and that I was going to throw up. Not that ring. Not that ring. Please, please, please not that ring.

I could not admit this loss to a single person, I decided. Not to my daughter, not to my aunt, not to anyone. After work and after a midnight dinner and two glasses of wine, I told my great guy.

“I’ll call the hotel in the morning, and we’ll go through the car and suitcase and everything again,” he calmly said, because he didn’t know my history–nay, my very identity–as a hopeless, dumb-ass, habitual jewelry loser.

I plodded through the following day at work at the place where I work the most shifts. I poured drinks and made conversation, and all was fine until I remembered the ring–which I remembered about every 15 minutes.

Over the next two days, I went through my jewelry box multiple times. I searched the floorboards of my car. I shook my purse out over and over again. And still, the ring remained missing.

“The hotel security office is looking into it,” said my great guy on the third day. “But nothing has turned up yet. You are absolutely sure you packed it when we were leaving for Fort Lauderdale?”

Hell, I could have unknowingly vacuumed up the thing if the ring had never made it into my purse in the first place. And if it had, and somehow it had dropped out of my purse in the hotel room, well, aloha my coveted and so-very-special ring.

“Can I talk with you?” asked one of my favorite regulars the following day–day four of the ring loss. She is an always-smiling, energetic woman who will do anything for you and does everything for everyone else. She constantly matches those with an excess something–be it clothing, an apartment, or even a broken AC unit–with those in need who are down on their luck or have to move tomorrow or know they can fix anything.

“Sure,” I said. I was doing the final paperwork before I left for the day. “Give me one second.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you at one of the deck tables, where it’s quiet,” she said. Hmm. Odd.

“What’s up?” I asked her a few minutes later.

“You know how I used to take care of my friend, the older woman?” she asked, which I didn’t really remember, but it didn’t surprise me. “Well, when she died, she didn’t have much, but what she did have I am sorting through and giving away.”

Okay, I don’t need anything, I am sure, I thought, wondering where this conversation was really headed.

“She would have loved you had she been able to meet you, because you are so cool and funny. And you wear similar jewelry to hers, believe it or not,” my regular continued. “So, I want you to take these gifts from my friend. She would have wanted you to have them and would have loved seeing you wear them.”

In my hand she dropped a tiny silver pinky ring inlaid with sapphire chips, and a pair of of dangling, antique silver-mesh earrings. I was stunned.

“But I never knew her!” I exclaimed, almost embarrassed. “Surely she has other friends, children…” I stuttered, feeling awkward.

“No, no, she had no one. Please take them, for the good karma,” she insisted. “They need a little cleaning up, but aren’t they beautiful?”

Yes, indeed. Incredibly beautiful.

“Look what one of my customers gave me,” I showed my great guy later that evening.

“Nice,” he smiled.

“Yeah,” I sighed. The gift was wonderful, but it made the reality of my lost ring more poignant. “Okay, one more time I am going through everything in my jewelry box to look for that ring,” I told him. I placed the jewelry that had belonged to a woman I had never known carefully on the coffee table. I’d add them to the jewelry box contents after I’d searched it for the umpteenth time.

I brought out the silk-covered box that had also belonged to my great grandmother and balanced it on my lap. I put on my glasses, opened the lid, and decided to take out every single piece of jewelry one more time. I reached for one of the two pairs of earrings I had packed with my ring, earrings I had already moved around in the jewelry box multiple times during previous searches. But this time, as I carefully picked up the pair, there it was–where it had not been for all the days I had been looking for it–acting as a kind of clasp holding the pair together.

“Oh my God, I found it!” I cried. “It’s right here, right here!” I exclaimed. I was utterly shocked, amazed and surprised. I had looked at those earrings so many times over the past few days. How could I have missed the ring being attached to them?

I glanced over at the sapphire pinky ring and delicate silver earrings that had belonged to the woman I had never known. And I knew right then, with complete certainty, that the spirit of this woman whom I’d never known had somehow arranged for my heirloom ring to finally be placed in plain view for me to find.

“Wow, you must not have seen it mixed up with the other earrings,” said my great guy, clearly happy and relieved for me.

“But, I had held them, moved them…” I started, then decided to let it go. Sure, sure. I must have simply missed and overlooked the ring throughout all my frantic searches. Yep, that was it.

How do you thank someone you never met, who passed before you ever had a chance to know her? How do you tell her you will cherish her tiny ring and beautiful earrings; and how they are both of a style you love and will frequently wear? And every time you wear them, you hope she hears your thanks for helping a perfect stranger find what had surely been lost forever.

“Hi,” he said, way too awake and far too jovial for my morning crowd. “Let me introduce myself.”

My regulars grudgingly looked up and silently acknowledged his presence, then immediately turned back to their styrofoam cups of dark coffee.

“Can I get you something from the bar?” I asked.

“No, no. I’m here to introduce myself,” he repeated, smiling as he fumbled with his attache. “Here,” he said, handing me a postcard-sized something.

The brightly colored, glossy card felt awkward in my aching fingers, which are perpetually cramping from too many shifts during which they are formed into a bartender’s grip poised to pour yet another shot of spirits.

“That’s me!” he exclaimed, smiling as I tried to make sense of the picture and message emblazoned across the front of his card.

“Well, yes it is,” I said, pretending to read it while waiting for his pitch to hawk booze, nonalcoholic teas, colorful bev naps or just about anything else this one of three places I work would never purchase.

“I’m running for the mosquito board,” he said, now very serious.

One of my coffee drinkers looked up at this comment.

“And I was told that if I want to win this thing, I need to visit every single local bar in the Keys.” Oh, that smile. “Well, and other places too. You know, restaurants and all the rest.”

File this place that I love and hate–and for reasons unknown to me to which I remain ever loyal despite the horrendous lack of money I make and the cast of characters I never thought I would ever, ever know, much less really get to know–under “all the rest,” I thought. I may not know much anymore, but I do know that this one place qualifies as everything that defines the ultimate of Keys “local.”

“Wait, there’s an actual mosquito board that one has to be elected to?” I asked, kind of curious. My locals breathed a collective sigh of relief as I asked this. Now they didn’t have to engage with this guy; it was all me and all him. Their coffees, their thoughts, and their quiet morning time was safe for another few minutes.

“In this county, yes,” he said, that smile still everywhere on his face.

“So, okay. But why you?” I asked, harking to my D.C. days, when I cared enough to vote in every single local election, based solely upon carefully thought-out reasons based on who-the-hell-knows what, now that I really think about it.

“Because I own a resort down south and the mosquitoes used to be under control and now they aren’t.”

Fair enough.

“It’s affecting my guests. My livelihood.”

I guess so.

“So I’m running for the board.”

My locals pretended to be disinterested. But I knew they were listening to every single word my mosquito man and I exchanged.

“You know what?” I said more than asked. “You have absolutely got my vote.” My God, any guy that drives more than an hour north to campaign for election to the county mosquito board deserves to be elected.

“Thank you!” he smiled more broadly than before. “Here!” he said as he handed me a pen.

Wait, a pen? With his name on it? A pen that actually writes? Ask any server or bartender. We covet pens. Give me a pen and I am your best friend. Give me two pens and I will give you a drink. Give me a handful of pens and I will not only vote for you, but I will tell everyone who walks through this local door as well as the doors of my other jobs to vote for you. Hell, I’ll be your campaign manager. No, seriously, you just met your vote-getting mama. Do you have a few more, pens that is?

“Just remember me on voting day!” he said, smiling that same ear-to-ear grin, as he walked out after dropping more pens on the bar.

“Are any of you registered to vote?” I asked my coffee-clatch gang, figuring I had a 50-50 shot at an affirmative answer.

“Does ten years ago count?” asked one.

“I never vote,” said another.

“What’s the point?” echoed his pal.

“Yeah, well I am registered,” I said. “And God help me that I am because I have to continually beg to get out of jury duty because I can’t afford the time off to serve, and I am on my third deferral as we speak.” I was rambling. “Anyway, if you can vote, vote for this guy.”

Blank stares from my regulars.

“Think about it. This is the mosquito board. That guy just drove an hour or more north to introduce himself and plead his worthiness as a mosquito board candidate right here, in this place!”

More blank stares.

“Well, all I can say is that he has my vote. And he better have yours!”

I was clearing my coffee bar.

“No, really!”

And they were going, going, gone.

So be it. I saved my candidate’s cards, however, and I have told anyone and everyone at my three jobs to vote for him.

On the eve of a tropical storm, the reaction to which screams first-snowfall panic in D.C., and as I smoke a last smoke for the night and swat more mosquitoes on my deck than I ever imagined would congregate around a citronella three-wick candle, I wish everyone in any kind of power could be more like my mosquito man: He drives miles to introduce himself; he has a personal connection to the problem he wants to correct; he really wants to get the job done.

I wish I had more of the guy’s cards. He needs a landslide, and I want to help make it happen. And no, it’s not about the pens. Okay, maybe it is, but only a little.

Anyone who knows me knows I am no cook. It’s not that I can’t cook–I can, and fairly well if I focus enough. It’s just that I’d rather do anything–including dishes–than cook. Oh sure, back in the day I cooked for the family (”Who wants breakfast for dinner?”), and once a year I hosted a holiday party for 50-70 people and cooked a veritable buffet feast that prompted many to say, “You must love to cook. This dinner is incredible!” Mr. RG and I always laughed at that comment, since he ultimately became the family chef, mostly out of self-preservation.

Then there is the Celiac Disorder issue, which makes cooking even more of a bore. Dining out is less of a bore, but far more risky and too expensive. Just when I think I know all I need to know to safely eat out, I find out that even fresh veggie sushi–without the soy sauce or any sauce, for that matter–makes my stomach ache and my chest and stomach break out in hives. Thank you, distilled vinegar. I might as well have eaten a donut.

After one particularly bad gluten attack from a mystery source, I noticed one of my hives didn’t go away. As days turned into weeks, this hive grew bigger and became a tad uncomfortable. Nice. When it got to the point that I stopped wearing any of my T-shirts except those with high enough neck lines that covered up the damn thing, I called one of the local dermatologists and begged for an appointment before work.

“We need to biopsy this,” said the doc.

“But it’s just an infected hive or something, right?” I asked for the second time.

“No, I don’t think it is. It’s not a melanoma, but I suspect it’s a skin cancer,” he said.

Sure enough, he was right, and I was wrong.

A week later I was back in his office, again feeling the sting of the numbing agent before he took the nasty thing off and singed the spot to kill it for good. As he scraped away (”It’s deeper than it first appeared.”), I re-lived the halcyon days of my thirteenth summer, when iodine-laced baby oil and album covers covered in foil were the norm for any of us girls trying to tan our skin darker than our friends’. This was followed by use of a Ban de Soleil product described as “orange gelee,” the smell of which immediately conjured up spending summers at the beach with those same friends as all of us tried in vain to keep the sand out of the greasy stuff.

The next morning, a little tender from the procedure, I was grateful to have at least the day off before I had to work a night shift. As I made coffee, I developed an incredible urge for fruit-filled muffins, which was immediately followed by a lesser urge for oatmeal-raison cookies.

I pulled out every bag of gluten-free baking products I had stashed in the kitchen, tossing out the ones that were out of date as I tried to piece together muffin and cookie recipes from the remaining product labels. I gave up, wandered to the living room and perused the long-ignored collection of cookbooks I had finally unpacked after several years and placed on the bottom of a bookshelf. I opted for Betty Crocker, substituted flour for flour, and cooked up a batch of mediocre raspberry-blackberry muffins. By then, the allure of adapting an oatmeal-raison cookie recipe–and actually trusting the gluten-free oats I had bought months ago to be gluten-free–had dissipated.

As I returned Betty to her dusty place on the bookshelf, I knocked over a small notebook-style collection of recipes I didn’t remember. Had I bought it at a yard sale? As it turned out, I had re-discovered my great grandmother’s dessert cookbook–a sparse collection of hand-written recipes categorized by those from whom she’d copied them–Mrs. McNeil, Mrs. Williams, and now and then a first name such as Marion. They were simply a collection of ingredients and minimal instruction about how to mix them. Not one included an oven temperature.

I spent an hour reading through each recipe, wishing I had looked here first and tried making a batch of Beulah’s carrot pudding or adapting ingredients for Mrs. Chapman’s Whipped Cream Cake.

It’s a cinch those ladies made a point to stay out of the sun in order to keep their skin fashionably pale and pretty and smooth, even as they aged. They cooked and swapped recipes, wore white gloves to luncheons and always kept a hat on outside. My great grandmother was a beauty right up until she died at age 82.

She would be 122 if she were alive today. She would scold me for my lack of desire to cook and my sun-kissed skin. Then she would bake me a batch of Mrs. Franklin’s spiced cookies and tell me to work less, cook more, and not worry about a skin cancer that is the easiest type to treat. Aging, she would tell me, is inevitable as much as it is fraught with the inevitable.

Be grateful. Be thankful. Take a baking day, now and then.

He was small, but tough. Very tough. And very small.

When they needed someone to crawl through unimaginably tight spaces and fix, find or forage for what might keep them all alive another hour, he was their man.

He was small and tough and very intelligent. He spoke with authority, certainty and complexity. He didn’t have to tell you he was right. He always was.

I never knew this brave, tough, smart-as-hell soldier who fought in a gritty war that occurred a generation ago. Others did, however, and I have gleaned from them sporadic, bright bits and pieces of his colorful past.

The man I know is small and sweet and never remembers my name. He re-introduces himself to me every 30 minutes on a bad night, twice a shift on a good night. Most nights he sits quietly beside his wife, drinking his beer and enjoying a plate of shrimp or chicken or whatever the night’s special is.

Now and then, this small, sweet man wanders off, which, in turn, sets off a flurry of mild panic as his wife and friends check the bathrooms and search the outside deck and parking lot. They always find him, however, and bring him back inside.

He mostly calls me “Princess” because he remembers that moniker, and he offers to get ice when I need it and take out the trash when the night is ending. At first, I refused his offers to help, but his wife begged me to allow him to perform a few chores each night, “Because it makes him feel useful.” So now I do. And he always does, with a smile.

Once when I brought the dogs in to say hello, he snuck a couple of fries and shrimp to each. “No!” cried his wife as she realized what he was up to. “Don’t feed that to those dogs, it’ll make them sick.”

I dug in my purse and pulled out an ancient bag of treats. “Here, you can feed them these,” I told him. His wife mouthed a silent “thank you.”

As I drove to work yesterday, I saw him walking along the side of the road. “Uh oh,” I thought, slowing down. Should I stop and pick him up? Did anyone know he was out on his own?

At that moment, I watched him stop beside a tree and pull down a branch filled with white blossoms. He held the flowery cluster to his face and breathed deeply. Then he smiled.

Seconds later, his wife walked out the front door of a nearby house and called to him. He waved to her. All was okay. I sped up and continued on my way.

What would it feel like to live every day when every day is timeless? I wondered as I faced the first of what is a long stint of 27 shifts over the next 21 days. What would it feel like to have all the time in the world to take as much time as you want to enjoy a simple flower?

In his case, he has earned this time. As for me, time eventually will tell.

“You look so familiar,” he said to RG Daughter as she poured his drink.

“Really? I grew up here, and I live and work here now that I’m out of school,” RG Daughter said, well into the second hour of a freelance bartending shift.

“No, no. Not here. Did you ever live in the Keys? Recently?” he asked.

“Uh, no but, um…” RG Daughter hesitated a second. “I mean, well, my mom lives in the Keys.”

“She does?” he asked, smiling now. “Does she work in a small bar in the upper Keys?”

“She works in three bars, but yes, one of them is up north,” RG Daughter said, knowing and not quite believing where this random conversation was headed.

“I met her! She served me a couple of drafts when I was down there fishing last month!” he exclaimed, not quite believing he had made this random connection.

“Seriously?” RG Daughter asked, laughing to herself when he confirmed the name of the bar located some 1000 miles from the bar she was tending. Seriously?

“Yes! There was something about the way you…I don’t know, poured my drink. I knew I knew you, but I guess it was your mom. Small world, right?”

“Yeah! That’s crazy,” RG Daughter said.

“Well, nice to meet you,” he laughed.

“You too,” RG Daughter laughed back.

Wow.

Add a third place of employment to your daily life, and you soon find that you live in an multi-layered netherworld of “almost” realities–almost feel like I live here; almost wish I could work more shifts there; almost wonder how the more things change, the more things remain the same everywhere.

A very short list of plusses and minuses about my tri-dimensional world:

Plus: Making money, finally.

Minus: Sometimes I forget where I am working, and I draw a total blank when I answer the workplace phone.

***

Plus: A bad shift at one place is often replaced by a good shift at one of the other places later that day.

Minus: It’s a double; it’s grueling.

***

Plus: No more sitting around the house and watching TV with the dogs during my time off, while my great guy works another in a perpetual string of shifts that occur opposite of mine.

Minus: Wait, did I feed the dogs–yesterday?

***

Plus: I appreciate my nicest customers at each job, allowing them to dilute the pain-in-the-ass customers that are a part of every job.

Minus: By the last hour of the second half of a double, no one seems nice.

***

Plus: I work for some great managers.

Minus: Balancing the moods and quirks and expectations of multiple managers, while trying to remember what rule is in what place at what job, can be tricky.

***

Plus: Making money, finally.

Minus that’s really a plus: Work, work, work and no time for a personal life that, of late, has had its challenges. This gives me time to ponder what’s next after I’m done making all this money, finally.

I have taken a third job, which means I now work eight shifts, with two as doubles.

I am not complaining at all. I am grateful to be working and finally paying my bills with a little left over.

I have many stories in mind, however. Soon, I know, I will eek out the time to write them.

In the meantime, peruse the archives and enjoy stories from the past four-and-a-half years.

Yours truly, living that dream,

RG