Unveiling Joy

Last weekend our daughters and their husbands took us to dinner . . . a really GOOD dinner.  No, a really really good dinner.  Yesterday I sent them a simple note of thanks, writing that I couldn’t remember when I’d enjoyed a restaurant meal so much . . . and then I remembered when I had.

Don Hunt was a curmudgeon of a boss that I had at the university, a guy who knew how to be fed.  As long-time director of the career planning and placement office at the university, Don had very warm relationships with lots of employers and recruiters.  This came in real handy when conferences came along and there were meals not provided by the program.  Being on Don’s staff gave me the unforgettable experience of watching a master moocher at work, placing us in a position to be fed well by his employer buddies.

Act one, Scene one: We were waiting in Detroit for our flight to a conference in Chicago when Don spotted Gus Tammen, one of his best friends, who also happened to be a recruiter for Arthur Andersen.  One of the “Big Eight” CPA firms in the country then, it was the Cadillac of the industry. 

Act one, Scene two: I am sitting with Don and Gus at a white linen-covered table for three at the 95^th, the fancy restaurant at the top of Chicago’s John Hancock Building.  It’s Gus’s treat.  I feel like Annie with Daddy Warbucks.  The food at the orphanage was never like this.  Money was literally no object; the menus had no prices listed, a way of allowing the host to free his guest to order without thinking of cost.   I ordered Beef Bordelaise and can almost taste it now, 33 years later, recalling how tender and flavorful it was, recalling that I didn’t want to even swallow, but just savor and savor.  I recall my delight being so obvious that Don and Gus were smiling at teach other watching me.  And I remember that I didn’t even try to hide my delight. 

Act two, Scene one:  We’re sitting in an intimate room with a table for eight at Trattoria Stella here in Traverse City.  Kathy is across the table from me, our daughter Amy and her husband David on my right, our daughter Margie flanked by her admiring nieces Nadia and Sonja and her husband Jeff.  A very warm and friendly waitress pours champagne; the girls propose a toast to Kathy and me, enjoying our health and our first year of happiness here in our new home town.   We each clink our glasses to every other person, looking into each others’ eyes just as our son Chris in Europe taught us.  I look at the menu, trying hard not to look at the prices, succeeding because our kid-conspirators had made it so clear that they wanted us to enjoy ourselves.

Act two, Scene two:  It’s so good I don’t want to swallow, just savor and savor.  My mouth still holding the forkful of flavor, I look across at my daughters’ faces, and Babbette’s Feast comes to mind.  I swallow and say it, the delight of the flavor on my tongue holding tears back, overpowering even them.  My delight was so obvious that my daughters were smiling at each other watching me.  And I didn’t even try to hide my delight.

As I wrote that note yesterday thanking them and I recalled the meal with Gus Tammen, I began to reflect on the two experiences, to try to understand why they were so similar.  Kathy has a gift of joy.  She is able to be completely present to it, present to people, to beauty, to experience.  I have a kind of veil, a layer not as thick as a wall but nevertheless something of thought or logic or fear that comes between me and all of these things, people, beauty, experience.  Perhaps it is “practicality” bred into me by working-class caution and conservatism, growing up a penny’s throw from poverty. 

Toward the end of the meal when Kathy had gone to the ladies room with our granddaughters, I confessed to our daughters that I had a problem giving myself to joy, that tonight had been an exception, an incursion into that alien and beautiful place.  It was no surprise to them, they told me later, my holding myself from joy.  They are no Gus Tammens; they and their husbands do not drive Porsches or work behind gold-leafed mahogany doors.  Their generosity came not from full wallets but full hearts. 

There in Chicago, I found myself in the hotel lobby with Gus, waiting for Don to check out.  I asked him how such a kind guy like him could work for a big shooter like Arthur Andersen.  I’ll never forget his reply.  “I enjoy people, and that seems to let me do things that work for the company.”  There it was, that word “joy”.   Gus enjoyed me. I think of Larry Canjar’s quote from yesterday’s blog, about life being a mystery to be lived, not a problem to be solved.  Sounds enjoyable.  I think of the foolishness of that veil of mine that turns mystery into problem, living into solving.  And I thank God for our daughters and their husbands and their grabbing that veil and giving it an effective  pull there in that little room at Stella, so that I could taste the joy, along with Kathy, and the granddaughters who share her freedom to climb into its embrace.

    

 FreeLemonadeStand by John J. Daniels is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.