Bar Story #1

Opening the outside door slowly, I whispered, "Does he wake easily?".

She looked up, wide-eyed, while the baby's eyelids fluttered and the bottle almost fell from his mouth. "No, honey. Come on out with the baby." She looked down at her grandson's face. "And I don't care if he does wake up."

I know the baby, the son of a server who lived above the bar. I told her as much, and brought my baby out to scamper across the concrete awkwardly on the balls of his feet and his hands, walking probably another month away.

It was warm and breezy, and perfect. My baby was trying to eat rose petals and I was drinking an old-fashioned. She talked to me, asking polite things, the age of the baby, my husband's name, what I did for a living. All those things you say to someone you don't really know and don't really care about knowing.

I looked at the baby in her lap, eyes open now, watching mine watching him. How long are you visiting for?

Just til 6, she says. I wish it was longer. I wish I didn't live so far away. A 5 hour drive, she told me. But, of course, it was worth it. It was her grandbaby.

When someone is so very happy in the moment but knows it won't last, and it will always be temporal, their face can't hide it. The sadness in the eyes overshadows everything else.

She told me she wished it had worked out between 'the kids', and she was worried when she found out her grandbaby was living above a bar. Which, I said, was a reasonable worry.

But now that she made it here, and she saw the apartment and light and brightness of the place, visited the restaurant and met the people who are now part of that little baby's life in some way, (like me, she said), she felt a lot better.

I thought about my married life and two kids and the unabashedly amazing wholeness of love that my husband's parents give my boys, and what it would be like for them if all my husband and I shared was just the children, not a marriage.

"We all here, you know?" I said, too quickly, without explanation. I backed up. "I mean, everyone here, we love that baby. We're here. For his mom, if she needs us. And for him. I'm so glad you were able to come and visit him here." I didn't want her to worry, I wanted to reassure her, of something, a community, an extenuation of not-quite-family but at least support, friends, more than drinks in the afternoon at the bar.

She smiled and said she was glad, and asked me where to take the baby for a walk, because she wanted to avoid the busy main streets. I told her behind the building, parallel to the train tracks, the roads were not well traveled, shady and quiet. That she should take a walk there.


            *****

*I like to observe people. I'm at bars and breweries and restaurants quite often. Hence, Bar Story. I hope to continue this over time, see where it goes.