Since arriving in Florida, we have been to four restaurants. All of the food has been delicious, the service friendly and no surprise – it’s an area where tourist satisfaction is the coin of the realm.
Our daughter, Helen, and her beau, Dan, are both bartenders. They met because their places of employment are right next door to one another in St. Pete. Dan’s place is a late night hangout, so my guess is Helen grabbed a stool after her shift ended at The Tiki Bar and the two started their relationship over a few Bud Lites.
Interestingly, Beth and I met across a bar, as well. She was the smiling bartender, I was the admiring customer and Old Grand Dad and ginger ale was the drink.
Are the angels busy playing with coincidences?
Yesterday, we walked to the waterfront, a place that’s still struggling a bit after the hurricanes that ravaged the coast last year. One of the reasons we are happy to dine out is to put some dollars in the pockets of the service staff and the owners who depend on tourism. Accordingly, I’m tipping 25% or more everywhere we go.
This afternoon, we plan on seeing either the Dylan movie or Wicked because it’s supposed to rain all day. There is a local bowling alley, so I might suggest a few games if the wet and windy forecast for this week is accurate.
Speaking of old grand dads and bowling, my father (and Helen’s grandpa) gifted Beth and I “his and hers bowling balls” when we became engaged. His reasoning was that all of the couples he knew who bowled together stayed together.
At the time, we thought he was crazy to give us that present (neither of us were bowlers), but in the hindsight that comes with 32 years of living, I’d say he was just a romantic goofball doing his best to wish us well.
I think I may have posted this recent epiphany about my friends, but it’s also true of my family: nearly all of us are heart-centered, intelligent lunatics. Sometimes, “intelligent” means creative and “lunatic” is frequently the stuff that leads us to make curious decisions like sending his and hers bowling balls from Texas to New York. Please note that “tasteful” is not one of our primary attributes.
Accepting my lineage of delightful, heart-centered lunacy is an important strip towards serenity for me. Our strongest suit is not our grasp of quantum physics nor our ability to build business empires. We Bierkos are Eastern Europeans (Polish) who have endured many generations of war and oppression by adapting a strong-willed desire to look at life with a sense of humor. I suppose you could say that we laugh instead of cry, that we sing and play instead of moping around and that we create community through unconditional love.
I think this post, then, is also my way of understanding what my parents saw in one another while my mom nursed her future husband back to health from a case of TB, what Beth and I have in our beautiful marriage and partnership and what Helen and Dan seem to be creating as survivors in this hurricane-ravaged town: the willingness to brave difficult passages with love, compassion and whimsy. It’s good advice for these times and it’s what I see in the loyal readers of this blog.
May you, my heart-centered, intelligent/creative lunatic friends find peace and acceptance in your balance of the same…and may you freely share it with those who need it most…everyone!
