Restaurant Stories

 

 

Some very interesting things can take place in a restaurant if you walk in with a cane, a dog, or taking someone’s arm who is leading you.  My friend Margaret and I used to visit restaurants all over Raleigh, almost everywhere in North Carolina, and even made just a few dents in some in Tennessee and New Mexico.  

…

It was a Friday night and we were visiting a crowded seafood restaurant.  I had a guide dog, a real clue that I was an independent, yet blind person, which to some people would immediately indicate needing lots of help.  The waitress was wonderful, only her degree of helpfulness was almost overkill.  She took my hand and touched the glass of tea, spread my napkin in my lap, went around the plate with my hand on the edge telling me where everything was, and then put my fork in my hand.

“Now are you all right?”   She asked.

“I definitely am just fine,” I answered, probably in a tone that indicated irritability. 

Finally she walked away.

“She may as well have just fed me,” I said to Margaret, as I reached for my glass of tea. I picked it up and put my lips around the straw … only to fine the little short paper covering the straw opening.

“Maybe she needs to,” Margaret said between her laughing.  I hope this is not one of those “guess you had to be there” stories, because it entertained Margaret and me for days and restaurants to come.

…

Margaret and I were eating at a restaurant with steps.  Holly, my guidedog, did a good job of getting me up the steps, and I knew she would stop and lower her head when we left upstairs to indicate we had reached the steps once more.  Finally our meal was over and we were headed out.  Holly stopped and lowered her head, at which point I took a step down.  There was no step down, only a large  fry no longer on the floor, and I had entertained the entire section of the restaurant with my version of dancing.  Holly was never a scrounger dog in public until she tasted fries, and those are the only things she would dive for.  From then on we had to be extra careful in restaurants where there were children in high chairs or sometimes adults who might accidentally drop a fry.

…

Margaret and I were at the beach, eating in a very upscale restaurant.  I decided to order a glass of wine with my dinner.  The glass was over half way gone.

“Do you think the waiter would give me just half a glass of wine?” I said to Margaret.

She took a rather long look at my glass.

“With or without the fly,” she answered. 

I didn’t want any more wine.

…

At Burger King once Margaret was with me, Holly, and my three very young grandchildren.  It was quite a feat just getting through the line with the children, not to add a blind lady with a dog.  The cashier handed Margaret my change instead of me, even though I was standing there with my hand out, feeling like an idiot.  We sat down and one of the children decided they wanted a frozen Snickers bar for dessert.  Margaret and I went to the front to get three desserts.  This time when I paid for the food I said:  “And please put the change in my hand this time.”  

After that every time someone reached out to hand Margaret my change she gave them a dirty look and stepped behind me.  She probably thought it was hard enough to look after three pre-schoolers, and then her friend embarrassed her, but she totally understood and was the most wonderful friend ever!

…

It was my first Sunday being invited to lunch with some church friends.  They let me be as independent as I needed to be and I did appreciate that, but was nervous, wondering what I might do to embarrass either them or myself.  We were at a restaurant called “Hot Spots,” and I ordered a bowl of chili and a glass of tea, hoping I wouldn’t drop chili all over my church clothes.  I should have taken a hint by the name of the restaurant that the chili was going to be hot, but there I was, determined not to ask the waitress to please take it back.  I just decided to wash it down with the tea.  It took me several glasses of tea to put out the fire, and I wondered why the lady beside me stopped talking.  Finally, someone told me.  It seems that every time I finished my tea I had reached over and picked up her glass.  I kept thinking the waiter filled up my glass and moved it, so I had reached until I found one. 

Yes, they still invited me to go out the next Sunday, and I did, just to show them I could behave.  I truly appreciated it when someone made a joke and said:  Everybody hold on to your tea now.”

…

I may have already blogged this story, but will go for it one more time.  I had been shopping close to the Golden Corral when it was new in Raleigh.  I had pretty good vision then and had no hesitation about going in alone and making myself a salad.  I was feeling good about being so independent until I found myself sprawled on top of a display of fall pumpkins decorating the Corral.  For some reason this was so funny to me even then that when someone came to help me up I just went right on and made my salad, laughing all the time.  I was trying to picture people eating in there and seeing a lady just fall on top of those pumpkins as though she had intended to, laughing while they came unstacked and probably a few rolled.  I do hope they did not burst.

…

This one wasn’t entirely my fault.  I had taken Brittany, my granddaughter who was about eighteen months old into a little ice cream shop in the neighborhood.  Margaret joined us.  I let Brittany get down while Margaret and I were talking.  Suddenly Brittany screamed.  She had stuck her head through the designs in the back of my chair and it would not come out.  She was so panicked we thought we might have to call the fire department, but knowing what went in surely would come out kept us working until her little head slipped back through the way she had gotten it in there.   

…

This little story comes straight out of a book I am working on, and is totally true.  It happened back in the day, probably about 1959.  I was at school at the NC State School for the Blind in Raleigh.  My friend and I had gone off campus to a little restaurant close by.  The story goes like this:

Laverne and I went to the Bright Spot.  I could not read the jukebox in there and we loved to play songs.  So We just put in our money and hoped for the best.  We were on our way back to our booth when I under estimated how close we were to a man’s table.  Until being introduced to blind barely teens, the man had been quietly enjoying his newspaper while he ate his dinner.  However, I managed to under estimate his table just right so as to run Laverne into the corner, causing his plate to take a nose dive for the floor and his drink close behind.  As newspaper, food, plate and drink raced toward the floor in all directions he frantically grabbed for whatever if anything he could catch.  Like the giggling girls we were we truly tried not to think it was funny, but when you are fourteen going on fourteen everything is funny unless it isn’t, then it’s a tragedy.  Well, the man’s tragedy and our fun never mixed.  Often I have admired the man’s patience as he slowly said in a mumbling not even irritated but very slow tone “Well, I guess I got some—ome-ome-ome  left.”   Laverne and I reached our booth just in time to hear Ernest Tub whine out a country heartbreak dirge that sent our laughter into overtime.  Neither of us thought one bit about how the man perceived blindness, nor how it looked to everyone in the little restaurant to see two blind girls totally out of control in silly-ville.” 

…

This is the sweetest restaurant story I know. 

Margaret and I went out to a Raleigh restaurant called Swaines Steak House.  The waitresses there were totally wowed with having a guidedog come in.  One of them was on her knees under the table before I could stop her.

The manager came over and welcomed us and Holly.  It was Holly’s tenth birthday.  She would be retiring very soon.

“Can I please bring her a steak?” he asked. 

This is something I would never agree to, but I thought about Holly’s impending retirement, her birthday, how much I loved her, and thanked him.  

Holly was treated to a fine steak, cut up in small pieces.  Then, as she ate, the piano lady stood up and announced that she was playing a song for Holly and her owner.  She began playing.  Tears came to my eyes as I recognized the song she played for us: …  “You’ll Never Walk alone.”

 

Braille Enrichment through Literacy and Learning

It is not often that I have ever felt like I was standing on the outside of time, but this week it happened.  Perhaps we all could benefit from such an experience at least once, but then again, maybe most people don’t need to as I realize how much I did.

I remember those little school desks and periods in the afternoon of first grade where we had tests of learning and writing Braille signs.  Of course this was after I had already conquered writing with the Braille slate and stylus. 

Braille is made up of six little dots in a cell, which seems impossible without knowing the mechanics of the Braille forms.  After learning the initial dots that make up the letters, there are combinations of letters for contracted signs that stand for certain words when used together.  Every letter of the alphabet has a word it stands for when left sitting by itself between spaces in a sentence.  For instance:

b is but

c is can,

d is do,

e is every,

f is from,

g is go

h is have,

j is just,

k is knowledge,

l is like,

and so on. 

There is a combination of dots…

2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 for the word “with”,

2, 3, 4, and 6 for the word “the”,

1, 4, 5, and 6 for the word “this”,

1, 2, 3, 4, and 6 for the word “and”, 

all six dots for “for”,

and countless others.     

The literacy of reading and writing Braille is not actually meant to be the total subject of this blog, rather the children who participate in the use of it as they are taught.  For several days the past two weeks, I have participated as a volunteer in a summer camp program called Braille Enrichment through Literacy and Learning.  This is done every year and is for blind children who are being further acquainted with the use of Braille, as well as other activities of daily living needed to make their lives simpler.  Some of these children were not only blind; one had cerebral palsy, a few some form of autism, and others in situations I do not really know.  For years I have known that the Governor Morehead School existed where blind people can be taught skills they need for life.  Before it became the Governor Morehead School in 1964, it was known as the North Carolina State School for the Blind, where I received an education that surpassed anything I ever imagined it would.

Through the years blind children are often now streamlined in the public schools.  There is an on-going debate between some blind people and some lawmakers as to whether or not this is the best way of teaching blind children.  Personally, I think this can be a good thing. So long as they have competent teachers to help them with demands of blind living, as well as parents to encourage their learning in all aspects, mostly including social interactions and learning Braille.  Some of the children I met this week go to public schools, yet attend this camp to brush up on the Braille skills they will often need in their futures.

In no way am I an (all Braille) or (all technical devices) person.  They can work together.  I personally have an iPhone, iPod, and iPad and am absolutely enamored with all the places my mind can travel with their apps and uses in reading, listening to music from around the world, abilities to provide for communication with teachers, and countless other educational, life, and health provisions.  You can even use Braille with the iPhone and iPad, and I am sure you can with other devices as well.  Still, Braille in itself makes a blind person literate, able to read and write a language on their own.  When I go to a Bible study I like having the words at my fingertips.  CD’s are labeled in Braille.  Recipes work better for me in Braille, unless I have something sticky all over my fingers and then I would not want to touch even a printed book and definitely not my iPad.  Braille can now be found in most buildings as room numbers, elevators, and bathrooms, as well as some health products, some drinks at McDonald’s, and some ATM machines, even with Braille instructions and Braille voting machines.  I will never forget the first time I used a machine and was able to cast my ballot without help.  I was in my fifties and was elated.

The thing is, as I watched those little ones working, working, working, I saw myself at six and seven years old.  I remember just following directions, never realizing why.  I’d be willing to bet I even thought the teachers were mean as they seemed to tirelessly demand just a little more every day than the day before.  We used to have bus loads of visitors from schools all over North Carolina come to the school to watch us do things.  Yesterday, for the first time I saw what they saw, a blind child doing something that seemed difficult.  To the blind child it seemed as simple as a pencil and paper, only the dots made the words and in our own way we could suddenly “see” them with our fingers.

It would never work for me to try to teach these little ones as I believe I would lose my objectivity and want to somehow make it easier, just as I would for a child with a pencil and paper.  Perhaps learning to read and write Braille is one of those things that made me believe goals could be reached through working, learning and actually “seeing” the outcome. 

I remember reading “Gone with the Wind” in Braille in high school.  It was at least ten volumes of Braille.  Even though I am glad that today children can listen to books on electronic devices, I am also glad that there is a language for the blind person’s fingers, which is like a sanctuary of quiet going everywhere those little dots can take us.  

Birthdays

This year I had four birthday outings, two of which were to Cracker Barrel, my favorite restaurant; however, I enjoyed friends and family in every single thing we did.  Tonight, while sitting here contemplating words of appreciation, my mind rewinds as I try to think of each birthday I remember as extra special, and wish I had written a blog every year.

When I was ten I had surgery on my left eye, and on my birthday when I turned eleven I was going home.  Back in the day, you had to be admitted to the hospital for congenital cataract surgery.  Anyway, it was a small clinic  in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and I was there for ten days.  The hospital staff, patients, and some visitors of patients gave me a surprise party.  There was a beautiful cake with something that looked like sparkles on it, the first birthday cake I ever saw, and it was beautiful.  One man raised parakeets and brought me a blue one.  My physician gave me a charm bracelet.  Mama’s twin sister gave me a Peter Pan doll, and I can still remember exactly what he looked and felt like.  When I got home to Lexington, Daddy’s mom gave me a large party outside in her back yard. 

The unfortunate thing is that I didn’t know how to say “thank you” properly at eleven years old.  Now, sixty years later I still don’t know how to find words for such an outpouring of love, and wonder if they had any idea of how much it has meant to me through the years.  

There was a builder working on a house close by whose birthday was also the same date as mine.  He gave me a dollar every birthday for the next three years. 

I turned twenty-one while I was studying medical transcription at Duke University Hospital.  My friends then realized I often did not have enough money to go with them to movies or restaurants, so that year five friends gave me cards with ten dollars in each one. 

When turning forty, I acted like my life was over.  I sat around the swimming pool at Bill and Betty Taylor’s house, such giving and wonderful people.  I spent the afternoon grumbling about getting old.  I don’t know why Betty didn’t send me home.  She finally asked me what size bathing suit I was wearing; it was a 10.  That was so much sweeter than her just telling me to hush up. 

At the age of fifty my daughter and daughter-in-law took me to eat dinner at Applebee’s.  I ordered a salad because that size 10 bathing suit was ten years back.  My son was in Canada on business and he called me that night to ask me what I had learned in my half century age.  I told him the most important thing is what I learned at my grandmother’s knee at age two, Jesus loves me, this I know.

At age sixty-five I gave myself a party.  The house was full of my friends.  Dorsey, one of them, brought lasagna. My grandchildren spent a lot of time making me a birthday banner which I set up over my keyboard, the perfect decoration.  I don’t remember a cake, just the friends, the banner and the love! 

All birthdays in between have been special!  However, the special thing is not the one with the birthday, but those who care enough to remember.  As I glance over my shoulder through the years I wonder why it took me so long to realize this.  Of course it is not a brand new epiphany, just an enlightenment that I hope will cause me to remember, and to think more of my family and friends than myself.  So, if today is your birthday, from my heart to yours, I hope you receive the blessings of love as I have been able to experience through the years.  Have the most special birthday ever!

 

Children's poems

 

LITTLE BOYS

 

 

Every boy wants to be a super-man.

If I ask my brother, he would understand;

 

As he shot up the west with a wooden gun

And rode his stick horse in the high noon sun.

 

His newspaper airplanes flew high in the trees,

 A broken umbrella protected the seas.

 

The fish hid deep in the walls of the brook

So he could not catch them with the worm on his hook.

 

And what do you think happens to those little boys?

They never grow up; they just find bigger toys.

 

…

 

LITTLE GIRLS

 

 

 

I was a pretty little girl one time;

All women were, at least in our minds.

 

Practicing twirls in make-believe worlds.

 Red and black pigtails, and polished up nails;

 

Girls can’t wait until they are grown,

So they can go shopping and talk on the phone.

 

Mommies are wonderful beautiful queens,

Daddies are heroes in hit movie scenes.

 

Before we can wipe up the milk that we spill,

Time’s magic wand turns our dolls into real.

 

 

Words of Wisdom

It seems that most of us want to say something wise, or at the very least profound as we grow into a place that other people think we should have surely learned something by now.  I believe if I made lists with  one side of all I know and the other side of all I do not know, the “do not know” side would be longer.  Hopefully, however, the things I do know may be worth more. 

 

There was a time when, if I heard a choir sing I thought surely I needed to be up there helping them out.  Now, I find joy in realizing I don’t have to, and realizing just how well they sing without me.  Learning to listen has been a hard lesson for my hard head.

 

Sometimes my mouth gets too full of words from thoughts inside my brain and spills it all out instead of swallowing, thus hurting another person.  Even if I could get my foot up high enough to kick myself, it would not stop the damage words can do.  After the movie “Love Story” came out lots of people around me often quoted the phrase “Love is never having to say you are sorry.”  Of course we hope that real love is not doing anything we need to apologize for.  Now I am wondering if part of love is actually being able to say we are sorry  … and meaning it from that part of our brain that never should have thought it in the first place. 

 

Even though there are so many things I wish I had not done in my life, I cannot spend the time I have left focusing on regrets, but must look toward the future at any age,  and strive for the mark of the high calling of Jesus Christ.  Of course I know perfection is out of reach, but if I do one little thing better today than I did yesterday at least it is a step in the right direction.

 

Now, let the birthday partying begin!  By partying this year I mean fruits and veggies.  Hopefully if I eat enough of those this year, next year’s party will include pizza.

 

 

Where Eagles Fly

WHERE EAGLES FLY

You know there is something wrong when even the poets wrap their feelings in words and hide them behind Longfellow’s childhood shadow.

I turn on some country music to feel a real heartbeat;

Or classical to re-locate my spirit.

Have we run out of words for beauty,

Or are there just no eagles flying over my house anymore.

From the middle of the pond a goose honks relentlessly;

I want to swim out to her, but the water is just too muddy.

 

Now I sit in the middle of a traffic jam--

Waiting for the light to change me into some other place.

In front of me a mother talks on the phone

While her children sit quietly belted in their seats in back.

Perhaps there will be a playground over the next hill.

Behind me is Granddaddy’s house.

It has five rooms, but then the kitchen doesn’t count.

The kitchen—where my brother and I sat on a long bench

Fighting over the drumstick the chicken walked on just yesterday.

 

It never rained on my Sundays of childhood.

I was beautiful just because Daddy said so.

And Christmas trees went to Heaven.

 

Heaven was Grandma's kitchen.

It smelled of peaches and wood and biscuits baking—But mostly of Grandma.

It was filled with family that sang classical country music.

The sun shone through the front window, the back door,

And right through the wall that had no windows or doors.

Just outside the back door hangs the swing

Where I swung right through childhood.

I feel the wood growing hard underneath me.

I can’t catch the eagles, so I stop pumping.

 

But the light has changed now.

The young mother stops her car by the city park.

The children jump out, kites in hand.

I smile at the children’s squeals

And the kite with the picture of a large bird and words written across the top:

 

“Where eagles fly.”

 

 

Throwback Thursday from Journal

Going Fishing

Labor Day, 1982  

Kevin was fourteen, Christi eleven, and we won’t go into how old Jim and I were.   This particular day was not overcast, yet not sunny either.   The family decided to go bowling and also have lunch at the bowling alley, about three plus miles from our house.   Our little convoy was four bicycles in a row, Kevin in front and me bringing up the rear, my usual spot in the line.   There was a greenway which cut off a large portion of miles and traffic.   Our day went along just fine and we were on our way back home, now entering the greenway.   We had gone about half a mile into the greenway when my bike ran over something on the paved ground.   Bump bump went the front, then rear tires.   I stopped, wondering what it was. 

“Mom, come on,” Kevin yelled back.

I just thought that little feeling was too strange, so I decided to back over it, rear tire first and then front, bump bump.   For some reason I enjoyed this little oddity, so bump bump forward, then bump bump again backward I went. 

“Come on!” The family trio called, quite intensely.

Of course, I had to bump bump to go forward and keep up with everybody.   About another half mile into the greenway, we all stopped.

“What was that?” I asked as the family laughed.

“Mama,” Kevin answered, “you just kept running over and over this man’s fishing pole.   He stared at you like he was in shock.”

“Well, why did he have that pole across the walk-way?”

“He was getting into a position to fish,” Kevin said. 

I never quite figured out whether the family thought it was funny, whether they were totally embarrassed, or if they even remember the incident.

I have also thought of how much harder that man would have stared if he had known it was an almost blind lady riding a bicycle that was running over and over his fishing pole.