One For The Book

I took one for the book yesterday. That’s my positive spin on my disaster yesterday.

I fell apart. I did. I still feel like I’m apart, like pieces of me are flipping and flopping around Bellevue.

Last night after a very hard day I took kids to one of our favorite restaurants, a place we’ve gone for years…in fact, we were among their first customers…and when we asked if we could sit at a particular table my boys love we were told there it was a table for four.

We’ve sat at this fun table for years, and because my former husband was in a wheelchair, we couldn’t get up the steps to this table when we were with him so we’d just do it when it was Jane and the boys.

So last night when we asked if we could sit there (the restaurant was empty since it was 5:15 and we’d gone early to get fast service) and we were told no, I fell apart.

I started to cry. Really cry. The kind of crying adults don’t do in public. The kind of crying that makes you think someone’s just died.

I don’t know if its the stress of my current book deadline. I don’t know if its fatigue fall out from my weekend in Reno participating in the Nevada Women’s Expo, but I looked at the ladies who manage the restaurant and said, ‘I’m a single mom. There are only three of us in my family. Do you mean we will never be able to sit at that table again?’

The lady said yes.

And I just cried harder.

It’s not as if I can’t go back there (but how can I, after bawling like that and being so upset about their new policy?) and it’s not as if I don’t have other restaurants to visit, but this one was our place as a family, and this one felt like home.

But home changes. We change. And maybe that’s why I cried.

Maybe I cried because I don’t want society defining my family for me.

Maybe I cried because here in Bellevue I feel like one�s got to be part of a �traditional family� to matter.

Or maybe I cried because I’m a crazy lady in need of serious meds.