Birthday Adventure

My aunt set her purse on the restaurant floor and scooted her chair over. We were on the final stop of our adventure, an outing we had planned to celebrate her 88th birthday. 

Over the last three hours she had given me a tour of historic Greenbelt, MD, the community she and my mom had grown up in. We had seen their houses and retraced their routes to school, the lake, the shopping center, and the pool. She had pointed out the tree under which the two of them waited every afternoon for my grandmother to return from her job at the Pentagon. "We saluted every car with a person in uniform in it," she laughed. "It was wartime, you know."

After Greenbelt, we drove the short distance to American Legion Post 136, a place I had spent quite a bit of time when I was a child. "Do you think we'll find any kittens in the window wells?" I joked as we approached the converted farmhouse. Trying the glass door, I was pleased to find it unlocked, and we showed ourselves in. There was a glass display case with some memorabilia, and I could see the restaurant and bar through a door beyond. We paused in a room with plaques on the wall engraved with the names of all the past commanders and presidents of the ladies' auxiliary. There we found the names of both of my grandparents. "Can I help you?" asked a woman of about 50 with some alarm. 

It turned out that the place was closed; we had only gotten in because the door was unlocked for the contractor who was onsite to give an estimate for roof repair. She politely showed us out, even as we explained who we were and why we were there. She shrugged with a mixture of apology and indifference at the mention of my grandfather and the baseball league named for him, and then she bolted the door behind us.

The next stop was the house where my grandparents lived when I was a child. It was smaller than in my recollection, but I could picture every room. There was the bay window in the dining room, the small kitchen window, my grandparents' bedroom, the attic. I reminded my aunt of how hot and stuffy the place would get on Sundays in winter, my grandfather would be cooking a prime rib and smoking a cigar and all the other adults were smoking, too. The gas fireplace was cranking heat and all the kids would lie with our faces on the cool plastic of the carpet runner, gasping for cool air on the floor.

And now we were at a restaurant known for its southern-style cooking. A young waitress came over to get our drink orders, but paused before she did to push a chair over to the other side of my aunt. "This is for your purse," she said.

I remembered a friend from work who told us that in some African American circles it's considered bad luck to put your purse on the floor. "Thank you!" I told our server, "Otherwise she'll never have any money!" 

She laughed and walked away. "Who cares?" my aunt said. "I feel rich, because today was such an amazing day!"