I’m up at 2:15am and I’m ready to head back home. I had decided to go to bed early the night before so I can drive through the night and cut through rush hour traffic in Charlotte. I brushed my teeth, threw my luggage back in my car, and realized I needed something to eat. Seven hours on an empty stomach is a surefire way for me to hate myself and other drivers. My going to bed early resulted in me getting two hours of crap sleep because commanding my body to do anything is an exercise in futility. I wanted to go home and get away from the week. We couldn’t agree on a place to live and we were nearing a deadline for when we had to move somewhere, it turns out that picking a place to live for the next year is a bigger deal than I had thought, and it left everyone with a bad taste in our mouths and I wanted to go home and detox. Slowly seeping into my head was the fact that I was going to be living in this area and it was going to be a lot sooner than I had previously thought. I didn’t want to think about any of that. I just wanted food.
Oh you know you're doing something wrong if your heart isn't calcifying by looking at this photo.
I throw my things into my car as quietly as I know how to throw anything. I had been staying at a friend’s place for the trip and I didn’t wanna wake anyone up. Now, I’m about as quiet as a car accident when I’m trying to move around but I guess trying to stay quiet counts for something in my mind. I turn my car on and let it sit there while I close my eyes and run my hand through my hair, sighing the exhausted and defeated sigh that we all sigh when life doesn’t go our way. This was the week that I saw in practice the life lesson I still refuse to accept: Just because you’re willing to bend over backwards for someone doesn’t mean they will reciprocate. Compromise was a one way street this week. I could feel my hairs graying in my hand as I drew the color out of them when my fingers parted through knots and frayed ends. I wasn’t ready to move but I wasn’t afraid of it. I didn’t want to think about any of that. I just wanted food. And I knew there was a Waffle House nearby. Saved.
Waffle House sits well in my soul and in my arteries. While you may end up at other places like Denny’s or Huddle House, Huddle House being Waffle House’s trampy younger sister, you go to Waffle House. There was never a time in my life that couldn’t be aided by a bowl of cheese grits and a waffle from a waiter who still reeks of the Newport cigarettes she huffed down in a hurry in the parking lot, that small window being the only break she may have had in the past ten hours of a busy night. Waffle House locations are either strategically placed or hidden away somewhere. It always looked weird to me that there were Waffle House locations in building complexes, nuzzled away inside the complex like a big Lego piece. Those locations are typically smaller and they look limited. The ones that are hidden away, like this one, you have to look for because they’re an oasis in a desert when you’re driving and want something to eat.
It’s about 2:30am now and I pull into the parking lot of this empty Waffle House. The last small group of people, about two our three people that are maybe slightly older than me, head out so it’s just me and the waitress. I worked the night shift at a convenience store. America wouldn’t exist without people like us. Idiots who are willing to work at 2:30am for meager pay, long hours, and never hearing that you’re doing a good job. This waitress is tired, doesn’t wanna be there, and she basically knows she works at Waffle House. I’ve never worked in a restaurant before, I don’t intend to start, but I imagine the realization of you working at a restaurant that is socially known as a place where you go to settle a belly full of liquor isn’t exactly the best way to establish self worth. She looked like she hated herself for even thinking working there was a good option. But I don’t imagine people in good life circumstances to choose Waffle House. It’s more like the circumstances force you to pick working there. I work for Fedex. You don’t go to work there. You end up working there. It’s the same principle. It turns out that she more or less ended up there.
She was a nurse in Ohio for years and then moved down to the Lawrenceville area to get away from her family. I was trying to find out why she would exchange being a nurse for a waffle cook. I didn’t get that much information out of her and I don’t think I wanted to know. Some of those kinds of questions have answers that I think would scare me out of wanting to move out of my parents’ house. I don’t even remember how we got on the topic of her moving down here, all I know is that we were talking about it. She kind of avoided the questions a bit, you’re not a social person if you think working at 2:30am is a good choice. You do that so you can avoid people as much as possible. And I understood that. I just wanted my food and that was it but I also knew that the waitress serving me my food is just as human as I am, if not more.
I eat and then I get up to go pay. Nothing special there other than my eating habits resembling that of a lion feasting on the broken throat of its kill. As is Waffle House tradition I hand her my card. Now this is the important part. Because our cards have our full names on it she looks at my card and she stops for all of one second and she looks at my card and she says “I have a two year old son who died in 2012 and his name was Joshua David.” It is 2:50ish in the morning right now, I’m at a Waffle House in Lawrenceville, Georgia, and I hear this sobering statement. I feel like I shouldn’t be surprised that this is what I experience at Waffle House, really I just don’t have any expectations for Waffle House trips other than the cooks not spitting in my food. So far, so good on that one. But this? This is new.
And she gives me what I call “The Mom Look”. And I’m sure everyone has seen this look in action before. It’s the look where you’re doing or saying something and the mother nearby looks at you as if what you’re doing and what you’re saying is reminding you of their own child. As if they’ve mentally swapped you out for their kid and they get that parental glaze in their eyes, for better and worse. That’s how this waitress looked at me. I don’t know if that’s why she left Ohio. I don’t know if that had anything to do with her working at Waffle House. That look she gave me still hasn’t left my memories and I suspect it to never leave. It’s a stamp on a hard reality check that these normal workers are just as shattered and devastated at life’s relentless cruelty as we are and my God my heart still breaks for that woman.
How do you respond to that? Are you meant to respond to that? Nobody gives you instructions for how to deal with that. I figured that I would have some sort of pastoral training embedded within me, having grown up with both mom and dad as pastors and being perpetually active in their church. Nope. None of that kicked in. All I knew was how to be human and part of me was not only grieving but sought to grieve too. But what could I say to her? I’m sorry? That doesn’t bring her child back. I didn’t name myself? If you wanna go down the “I’m a scathing asshole” route then yeah but it’s 3:00am now and you don’t need to do that. As Nanny told Janie, she’s a cracked plate. Whatever healing can take place has taken place and is still taking place. Sometimes you’re not meant to respond. Sometimes you can’t help them. You don’t have to be okay with that. There is a natural human trait, inborn in all people, of wanting to help others that we perceive to be in trouble. If my mind was a punching bag then that inborn trait was Mike Tyson in the second round of training his signature right hook-left hook combination. There was nothing I could do. No Jesus to give her. I figured that Jesus is still grieving with her anyways.
I get back in my car and drive home. Five of those seven hours were in complete silence.
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