Today is Karen's birthday. She would have been 37. It was one of the many dates I dreaded when looking forward on the calendar - there are still many to come. We only had the chance to celebrate one birthday each, my 37th this year and her 36th last year (I shared by 36th birthday with the KLM in-flight crew on my way to The Hague) . Far far too few, as with everything else about our lives together.
Rather than try and put into words the sadness of this day without her, I thought I would recount her birthday last year....
When December 23, 2007, rolled around Karen and I had been dating only for a couple of months. Everything was still so new and I wanted to do something special for her. There is a restaurant in Park Slope called Al Di La that gets written up consistently as being exceptional Italian food. Karen was a maven for Italian and had been wanting to try it. Indeed she had mentioned it several times as being on the list of places for us to go. I knew that Al Di La doesn't take reservations (nor does it take credit cards, fyi) so did not bother calling. My thought was that we'd wander down there and get on line with everyone else.
Well, imagine my surprise, and unhappiness, when we got to the corner of Carroll and 5th avenue only to discover that Al Di La goes dark for the week around Christmas. Sure, great thing for the staff to be able to spend the holiday season with their families, but at the time all I could think of was "Shit! Now what do I do?"
Here I was, still in the early stages of wooing Karen, the "it" girl from high school who I've somehow managed to get a second (or first) chance with, and we're standing on the corner in front of a closed restaurant on the night of her birthday. What a way to impress Mr. Fried.
Luckily just down the street is Blue Ribbon, another entry on Karen's list of places to go, although not as high up as Al Di La. Blue Ribbon is certainly a good place to eat, but I would not consider it a place for a "special" dinner such as this. However, beggars can't be choosers, and Karen was getting hungry. Off to Blue Ribbon it was, where we had an enjoyable meal.
That was what our relationship was about in a nutshell; living by improvisation and embracing the notion of carpe deim. So when the planned (albeit, not appropriately so) restaurant fell through we just smiled, laughed, and went elsewhere. It wasn't the place that mattered, it was that we were there together. We had the same amount of joy whether we were driving to Tadoussac on our honeymoon or driving to Home Depot on a Saturday. It was that we were sitting next to each other, sharing the moment as one.
Such was how we celebrated her 36th birthday, together and that was all that mattered.
(It is worth noting that we later did go to Al Di La and Karen was underwhelmed by the food. She said it was good, but not worthy of the accolades in her opinion. I have to agree, it has been off the mark on the last times I've been and, while a solid meal, Brooklyn's restaurant scene has many more great places now.)
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That was a particularly hard day for me. In the morning, Laurie was a bit unnerved. I told her, that if it went ok for my parents, it shouldn't be a problem for us. The facts were the same the day before, and would be the same that day after, no problem.
ReplyDeleteLogical plan, seemed right. Didn't work. Bad day for me. Hasn't been much easier since.