You cannot predict the way each first will feel.
Ten years ago was the first Thanksgiving since Dad died. I know we went to someone’s home, but I do not remember whose. I know we smiled without feeling warm. We prayed without believing. We ended up at a Waffle House because there is no correct thing to do when it is Thanksgiving and your father is dead by means that are both intimately familiar and disastrously mysterious.
I remember details that are irrelevant. The Waffle House was startlingly clean. I ate a pecan waffle. We sat at the bar, perhaps so that we didn’t have to look each other in the eye. The man who sat next to me was bald.
I remember details that are bizarre. One waiter sexually harassed a co-worker, or at least it seemed that way to me. The co-worker’s tooth fell out. She was bleeding everywhere and trying to keep up with orders for smothered and covered hash browns at the same time. I wanted to tell her to put her tooth in a glass of milk. Isn’t that what you are supposed to do with a tooth?
You cannot predict the way each first will feel, but you might feel warm and almost spiritual when the bizarreness of the first Thanksgiving without your father is reflected in the oddity that is Waffle House waitresses.
