That Waiter at Elizabeth's

Some years ago, a day or two after the Muses parade, Stacie and Mark joined us for brunch at Elizabeth's in the Bywater neighborhood. We had before and have since gone to brunch there, and it's always spot on.

This particular day, we got seated upstairs. And then it took a little while for a spaced out waiter to show up and take our orders. But it was all good. We probably reviewed tales of the parade and after party and didn't think too much about the fact that it took our mimosas a while to show up.

Elizabeth's

After a bit, the waiter came to the table to take our order again. He had completely forgotten about our original orders.

More time passed. More tables gave their orders. But food wasn't really coming out.

What also wasn't coming out was refills on bottomless mimosas. But the station was over on the side of the room, and eventually, I got up to refill the glasses on my table. Walking back to the side, I noticed that some of the other tables had empty mimosa glasses so I went ahead and refilled them too. From then on, different people from different tables would get up, walk around, and refill the empty mimosa glasses for the whole room.

This is what it's like to be part of a community.

After an hour or more, an occasional plate of food would come up, but rarely did it match anything that anyone in the room had ordered. The scene became funnier and funnier to all in the room, except for Mark and Stacie who were starting to stress about getting to the airport in time for their flight.

The waiter popped back in to introduce himself and ask if he could take our orders.

After a couple of hours, Mark and Stace left for the airport. I'm sure they were hungry. I'm not sure if they were more annoyed or more amused.

Maybe a half hour after that, a woman we hadn't seen yet came up. She apologized and explained that the waiter was so high that they sent him home. He proceded to go outside, get on his motorcycle, and crash through the back door into the kitchen.

She then took our orders and had our food out 15 minutes later.

I'm sure I got to thinking about this because we saw Stacie and Mark at her father's funeral last week. Stacie's parents were always so great to us when we were younger. The world is a little less bright. I also hope to outlive Stacie so she can help someone write their eulogy for me, because what she wrote was touching, funny, and beautiful.