When you haven’t been to Raindancer with your bestie in a couple of decades, you have to order a Colossal Flowering Onion. So it was that Suzie and I found ourselves on the receiving end of what is indeed a Colossal Flowering Onion, in all its fried glory and horseradish sauce splendor (and no, we did not completely finish it). We were in town for the Still Remains show, and decided to do a catch-up dinner at one of Amsterdam’s stalwart haunts.
When I arrived (we were traveling separately) I sat in the parking lot for a minute and watched as an older couple got out of their car. The woman hurried ahead, while the man, in white hair, walked around to the passenger side to examine something before catching up with her. It was such a commonplace scene, and not at all noteworthy, except it reminded me of my parents, and all the dinners we had there over the years. Such simple scenes would not happen now that Dad was gone, and I took it in again. There was a pang of sadness, the insidious sliver of loss, but it was ok. I pulled my coat around me and rushed out into the winter’s brutal cold.
At our table, I noticed the salt and pepper shakers, thinking of how well they went together, and how strange it would be for them to be apart. But Suzie kept the talk buoyant, and I never let on what was in my mind. Not that she would have minded or that I intentionally wanted to keep it secret (clearly, as I’ve poured it all out here) – I just stuck to other people’s drama, and we ended up having a fine dinner before the show.
A little fried food goes a long way toward comforting new wounds, as does an old friend.
