Sundays are often very busy for us. Our busyness is equal parts the nature of my vocation and my own choices. Yesterday, we had a bit more time for lunch. A co-worker told Patty about Granny’s Kitchen, so off we went.
We stood between the door and the waitstaff podium in the packed restaurant. The waitress left to see if she had a table for two. We heard the door open, and a senior adult couple came in from the cold, also looking for a table.
“We could share that table over there,” the gentleman said.
We planned to enjoy a meal, just the two of us, which does not happen so often, even if we are long-time empty nesters. We looked at each other, having never experienced such a forward suggestion from strangers.
We agreed that we would be glad to share a table.
John and Dawn, both 86, outlived their first spouses. While in town for a doctor’s visit, they stayed with Dawn’s sister. She wore a small bandage on her nose, nothing quite the size of the first one. They both laughed as they talked about it.
Patty asked how they met. He got a big grin. She told us she was a music teacher, mainly piano, though she could play nearly any stringed instrument. John had called and asked if she taught adults. Dawn replied that she did. They shared that he came for one lesson and never went home. We all laughed.
Ten years. Five years. Maybe they had been married somewhere in the middle. But, it was clear they enjoyed one another’s company, and neither had met a stranger. He began telling a story he had learned from her first marriage. It seems Dawn and her late husband were traveling in Italy or Greece. That part is fuzzy. They happened upon a church. Entering the building, they discovered the cleaning person. Seeing the organ, she asked the lady if she could play. “Yes,” she was told. “The regular organist had been sick.”
Dawn played for more than an hour. By the time she finished, she said the church was packed. She later learned that the cleaning person had been calling all her friends, maybe even those who regularly attended worship there, and that was the crowd that filled the building.
I could not help but think of stories my Mom tells about me. Our family regularly vacationed at Lake Taneycomo between Branson and Forsyth, Missouri. Barely walking and talking, she told me I had met every other guest before everyone was settled into their cabins and knew where they came from. She said, I never met a stranger.
John knew no strangers. The self-described Yankee from Northern Indiana prided himself on his levity and engaging personality.
We all left and headed in different directions. We went home, and they returned to Dawn’s sister’s house. They would get up this morning and drive 6-8 hours to their home in the mountains, where John told us all he had to do was fish and cut rocks. “There is no grass!” I’m still laughing at that one.
On the way home, Patty and I talked about our lunch dates. We wondered what we might be like in another couple of decades. Would we ever be so forward as to invite ourselves to share a table with strangers so we do not have to wait for a table? Maybe one day someone will leave our company and think like we did yesterday,
“We are strangers no longer.”
After sharing a meal with a couple we had never met, we are better off today. We are now left looking for more moments of serendipitous joy.
Keep an eye open for your opportunities.
