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When I go to work I often come in contact with waiters and waitresses that are also going to their jobs and park in the same employee lot as me as there are many restaurants that are our neighbors.

Often we don’t speak, but I try to wish them a good day.  Though we are in the same type of service industry, my hourly pay doesn’t depend on how many people walk in the door and what kind of mood they are in.  I have never waitressed, but based on my own experience with customer service I know their job is much harder than mine.

The other day I took a phone order from a woman who seemed to delight in being condescending to salespeople.

Ma’m, do you spell your first name E-V-E-L-Y-N?

No, Kathy, it’s E-V-E-L-Y-N.  Didn’t you hear me?

Evelyn, just bear with me a moment.  I have to get the sales tax off your order and the computer is running a little slow this morning.

Kathy, what did you do wrong now?  Oh and Kathy, when you fold that skirt make sure there’s no creases in it so that when I take it out of the box and put it on it’s perfect.

That is just a small portion of the penance I did.  It went on and on………always with the “Kathy”.  Constantly referring to someone by their first name doesn’t make you less of a bitch.  Evelyn. 

On Wednesday, at just past six and half a mile from where I work was a gas explosion right outside a popular restaurant in the Plaza area of Kansas City.

There have been many serious injuries and several people are still in the hospital.  Everybody made it out of there with the exception of one waitress.

Her body was found the next day and one of her coworkers said, “Everybody loves her.  Nobody can say anything bad about her.” 

She was described as politically active, funny, had a law degree and loved working in the restaurant.

One of the hundreds of service workers that travel to that area every single day and try to eek out a living……

I hope she never encountered an Evelyn on her shift. 

I hope somebody wished her well on what would be her last day on this earth.

We have sent out a Christmas letter for twenty years and for a girl who writes every day, this year was tough.  Every time I sat down to do it, I’d write five minutes of crap and then surf for crap on the time-sucking net.  I found out that the Kardashians photoshop their card, Michael Jordan got kicked off a golf course in Florida for wearing cargo shorts and the way to make your crinkly, aging neck seem more youthful is to wear a scarf.  Drrrrr……………… 

But I got it done in the nick of time………………a Festivus miracle.

When I was growing up, my siblings and I went to a Catholic elementary school.  With a public high school just blocks from our house we parted ways with a private school education after the 8th grade.  Some of my siblings have sent their kids to Catholic schools, and some of us have gone the public route.

Like my family, my neighborhood is a combination of both.  When we moved here I entertained the idea of sending my kids to the Catholic school, but this area of Kansas is known for its quality education and so we decided to send them to public schools.  We have never regretted the decision and I am sure my neighbors with kids in private schools would say the same.

Over more than twenty years of being in the school system, we have known many families that have experienced tragic losses.  My dear friend, Vicki, died of ovarian cancer with a 7th grader and kindergartner left behind.  Days later, another 7th grade girl lost her dad to a sudden heart attack.  I know two families who have dealt with the sudden shocking diagnosis of a brain tumor and several mothers who have breast cancer.  Last month, a senior at our high school died in an ATV accident two days after Thanksgiving while the fifty year old father of two other students collapsed and died on the following day.

In the midst of all of this is a school community that has been enormously supportive.  Meals, carpools, transportation to doctor appointments, house and yard cleaning.  If a family is in crisis, somebody takes charge and puts people to work.

It is what we do when we cannot fix the very big thing that has gone terribly wrong.

Former Governor Mike Huckabee and other conservative Christians were quick to point out hours after the devastating losses in Connecticut that this tragedy was because we have removed God from our public schools. 

Our community is a mixture of many faiths and our public schools are a reflection of that.  If those first graders, and the courageous staff that tried to protect them in the last moments they had on this earth, didn’t hear the voice of their higher power say…………..

Be not afraid 
I go before you always

…………..then I have wasted a lifetime of prayer.

Last month, Mark, Mallory and I went to see Lincoln.  As is the nature of our half-assedness, we ordered tickets online but left the house later than we should have for a crowded Friday night that also featured the new Twilight movie.

When we got inside the theater there weren’t many seats left and so we sat near the front.  There were five rows ahead of us that were too close to the screen, then a wide aisle before the rest of the regular seats.  We sat to the left of the movie screen behind the aisle – a small row with only four seats.

Directly in front of us was a ramp that led to an emergency exit.

Throughout the movie my eyes kept darting to the exit.  Over and over.  There were no seats in front of us, and so I surmised that if that horrible night in Aurora, Colorado was replicated, I would dive onto Mallory and Mark would likely shield both of us.

Twice during the movie, a guy got up to share snacks with someone he knew who was sitting a few rows ahead of him and I watched his every move.  When friends asked what I thought of the movie, I said it was good and left out the part about feeling trapped for too long in a theater.

Ever since then I’ve thought about writing of that night.  I thought about it again last week when there was the mall shooting in Oregon.  I also thought that my anxiety level was reaching ridiculous levels.

I never fathomed it was about to go to a new place.

When I went to the City Council meetings last year which you can read about here, I saw my representatives in action.

One council member chowed down on a plate of spaghetti while listening to the citizens of Mayberry complain and it was a wee bit distracting.   At one point, he got up and went behind a door which I thought meant he was done.  Instead, he came out with another heaping plate.

When I asked somebody about it, they told me that because the council members usually come straight from work to the meetings, the city provides a dinner for them that most eat before the start of the meeting or during breaks.

Said councilman did not adhere to the manners of most.  Now he has gotten himself into some hot water that makes jumping into a pot of the boiling pasta kind look inviting.

He had a friend who was a little down on his luck.  Homeless.  A history of drug use.  A criminal record.  When he inquired of the police department as to what resources were available to help out this friend, they directed him to a shelter in Kansas City.   While that was an option, Spaghettiman instead gave him his access code, and for the better part of a weekend this guy was camping in the comfort of city hall and its municipal buildings.  Why he even invited one of his buddies over to enjoy the facilities.

Why in the world didn’t Spaghettiman bring his friend to his own house to spend the weekend instead of housing him in City Hall?

That was never an option.

No.  He could never do something like that.

He lives in his parents basement. 

Will was born three weeks after my dad died.  Maggie and I had spent the early part of the summer at Mom and Dad’s house and returned to Maryland in July.  By the end of that month, Dad decided to stop his treatments.

We were insured by Kaiser Permanente and the protocol when you were expecting was to alternate seeing a nurse one appointment, an OB/GYN the next.  I was seven months pregnant before I ever saw a doctor.

Things at home were going downhill quickly and Mom said we should think about coming home to see Dad one more time, but a woman as pregnant as I was couldn’t get on a plane without a note from their doctor.  I was going every other week for checkups and every time I asked the answer was “no.”  No you can’t go, no it’s too stressful, no we won’t write you a note.  No.  No.  No.

On an appointment when I saw an actual doctor and explained the situation again, he said of course you have to go and I’ll write the note right now.  He handed it to me and on his way out the door said, “But don’t deliver that baby in Illinois because Kaiser won’t pay for it.”

Mark, Maggie and I flew home with the intent of staying over Labor Day weekend.  Mom was under enormous stress trying to take care of Dad and since Mark had plenty of vacation time we ended up staying nearly two weeks to help out.

After Dad died and the funeral plans had been set, we booked our flight back to Maryland with US Air.  We went to the church, the cemetery and the luncheon afterwards then packed our stuff and headed to the airport so this baby would be born where we were insured.

I gave my note to the flight attendant and we boarded a very empty plane.  After the flight had taken off and I was using the bathroom, Mark told her of the circumstances of the past few weeks.  When I came back to my seat she said to me, “Honey, why don’t you rest and I’ll let you know when we’re about to land.”  Then she led me to an empty row of seats that she’d put pillows and blankets on so I could nap.

I was cried out by then but I remember how compassionate she was to a fragile pregnant woman who was on a flight into the unknown, and that the crappy doctor’s office I’d been dealing with all year could learn something from her.

While I was at work today, my friend, Carla, left a message.  I miss you.  I’ve been thinking about you.  Give me a call.

Sigh.

Carla was the first mom friend I made when we moved to Maryland.  She and Jim were fellow transplanted Midwesterners who lived a few doors down from us.  While we were moving in her mom kept an eye on the activity and later that day met Mark at the dumpster.  Do you have a baby, she asked.  Yes, six weeks old, he said.  My daughter lives there.  Her baby is three weeks old and tomorrow her and your wife need to meet each other.

The Big Daddy went along with Betty’s plan and that is how a twenty five year friendship began.

Since those years we have never lived near each other and long stretches of time go by when we don’t talk, but when we do it is just like the old days when we’d meet each other on the sidewalk with crying babies.

She had seen the photos from Maggie and Nate’s wedding and wanted to know the deets.  I filled her in about that lovely day and then we talked about everything from yoga to kids to us both turning into retail girls.

Whenever anyone asks me about the wedding and if I was emotional, I tell them about two things.  One was when everyone had come up the aisle and we were waiting for the bride.  I stuck my head out of the pew and looked at the back of the church and saw Mark and Maggie.

Oh Lordy, will you look at those two?   She’s so happy.  He’s so proud.

The other time I wanted to cry was when my hairdresser came to the house.  Nearly ten years of her taming my wild curls, hearing about my decorating projects, my dog, the garden, the kitchen I want to gut, my husband………..my husband!  There she was with all of her magic, and I still can’t talk about how much it meant to me to have her here that day without getting choked up.

With all that Carla and I talked about I never got around to that part but I didn’t need to.  If anybody would know about a full heart spilling over it would be the friend who was there from the start.

When the kids were little, The Big Daddy would take them fishing.  There were mishaps.  Oh, were there mishaps.  Like when he was putting yet another minnow on a hook and his glasses fell off his head and he had to fish them out before they settled into the murkiness of the lake.

I can’t say they learned to love to fish, but they did learn to love the tale.

My dad’s name was Bill.  My son’s name is Will.  My nephew’s name is Liam.  I am surrounded by versions of William.

When Maggie was dating in high school, her boyfriend’s best friend was named Will.  Since that breakup and over the years, Best Friend Will has remained a constant in her life.  He has been to our house many times and was an usher when she and Nate got hitched.

We heart the Will.

Maggie and Nate stood up in a wedding this weekend that we were invited to.  Maggie’s best friend and Will sat with Mark and I.  I chatted with them for awhile and after dinner the bridesmaid and groomsman joined our table.  I said something to Will which caused Maggie to announce, “I’m sorry.  I have to apologize for my mom, Will.  She’s got a crush on you.”

What????

“When the pictures from the wedding came in every time she saw you she said……..oh there’s Will.  I love Will.”

Oh, geez, Maggie.  Really???

Will gives Maggie shit when she deserves it.  He’s smart, funny, a good friend and a ten on the cute meter.  What’s not to like about him?

Before dinner when we were catching up on his last year of med school, he told me he reads my blog every day.  It’s in his favorites.  Your favorites?   Oh my.

I have a crush on every one of my daily readers.  As for Will the Friend, I hope one day that he meets a girl who falls crazy in love with him and thinks he hung the moon………..and that I’m there to celebrate.