and Words
[Instrumental]
We arrive at St. John’s Resort in Plymouth, Michigan, early on a Friday morning after a red-eye. The hotel desk won’t check us in for a few more hours, but they’ll happily hold our luggage. We wander to Five Steakhouse, the restaurant a few dozen feet from the front desk, to get breakfast. We made our order: a couple of lattes and our respective dishes.
As you might expect, we were exhausted. After a full day of work, we ran home to finish packing to get on a plane. We got little sleep during our flight, but sleeping on a plane is never restful. This quiet meal with coffee and corned beef hash, at least for me, would need to sustain me for a bit. This day would run long, and we didn’t know precisely what to expect.
While we didn’t know it at the time, this dining room would become our home base for the days that followed. We sat at a table off to one side. She sat on the long, contiguous booth on one side, and I sat in the comfortable chair opposite her at the table. On this particular morning, no one else sits in the dining room; the waitress occasionally stops by to check on us. We calmly discussed what we’d need to tackle today.
The only entrance to this restaurant is a set of double doors, with a host station to one side. This dining room was upscale without being uppity. A bar, centrally located along the back, displayed an array of bottles that served as a backdrop. Mounted high, on either side of that bar, sat two television sets. They were off at this time of the morning. They adorned the room with warm earth tones and wooden fixtures. Bricks lined portions of the wall in this room; I quietly wondered if they were real or stapled on like Daryl Hannah had done in Wall Street.
The walls displayed classic, decades-old, black and white photos from automobile factories, enlarged to art print size. The half-built cars in the pictures clearly predated me, though the archaic assembly lines intrigued the engineer in me. Though I noted how one picture had been carefully edited, where portions of the tracks on the assembly line floor didn’t quite align.
The music played a little too loudly for breakfast. The playlist includes songs from the 70s and 80s, which takes me back to my childhood. The voices of Glenn Frey, Jackson Browne, and Don Henley told their respective stories. First, images of a woman in a pick-up truck in Winslow, Arizona, fill my mind. Next, images flood of Jennifer Jason Leigh losing her virginity in a baseball dugout to the words “Somebody’s Baby”; most of us quietly weeping at the crassness of the whole event. Next, I navigate through scenes from a lonely café in some distant place filled with optimism and lost dreams.
That music bellowed from the unseen speakers scattered throughout the dining room like my own private soundtrack to my childhood. Abruptly, the words end, and we get only music. The familiar sounds of brass and soft jazz echo from the 70s; hours of airtime on the radio in South Florida pounded the familiar notes into my ears. I recognize the artist as Chuck Mangione, but I never knew the name of the song. A few taps into Shazam reveal the name of the tune is ‘Feels So Good’. Really?! This sounds completely unfamiliar.
As quickly as the words disappeared, they returned in the next tune. That one instrumental, an earworm, lingered for hours if not days.
That first morning occurred months ago, and we didn’t know what our immediate future held while we visited sick family. We started each day with concern, but quiet optimism. We outlined the hurdles we hoped we’d tackle each morning at the breakfast table. On most days, we made progress; we celebrated. We endured the few instances when we didn’t. Then, after a few days, she finally came home from the hospital. We spent the remainder of that visit getting her situated at home as comfortably as possible, though in our quiet moments, we shed tears of relief and joy. Our most recent visit, weeks later, was a celebration of recovery.
That dining room became the launching point of our day. We rotated breakfast orders; we tried the corned beef hash, the salmon eggs benedict, and their custom-made omelette. They always paired with a latte and occasionally with a glass of orange juice. By the end of our stay, we had occupied most sections of that dining room by sheer happenstance.
This room also became the nightcap to our day, both figuratively and literally. Though in the evenings, we chose to sit at the bar. We found favorite food items, which we ordered regularly. They brought consistency and comfort. On some days, we dined extravagantly; on others, we dined casually. I lazily glanced at the television screens, which showed mostly sporting events from local teams, both professional and college, neither of which especially interested me.
As we sat at the bar, we befriended the staff. Johnny B, Emma, and Jenna served exceptional drinks and took good care of us. Meticulously prepared Cosmopolitans anchored those evenings when we celebrated the progress we made each day. Those moments were not merely about sustenance, but recharging for the day that followed. They didn’t simply make our drinks and serve us our food. In the most literal description of the phrase, they took care of us. We’re deeply grateful.
On one occasion, we engaged in conversation with another patron a few seats away. In his state of enebriation, he became a little too chatty and friendly. While he looked away, she mouthed to Johnny, our friendly bartender, “Save me!” Our bartender subtly and quietly moves this patron’s beer back to his seat next to his wife. Moments later, upon discovering that his drink had moved, he returned to his seat. To this day, I’m astonished at how effectively this worked. I’ll never know if he wanted to retrieve his drink or if he realized he overstayed his welcome.