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Elevator Breakfast

The Photo That Got Away

A woman who got on the elevator carrying a large plate, on which rested a napkin, a spoon, and a bowl filled to the brim with cereal and milk. She smiled at everyone and said, “I got a late start this morning.”

Paul and I went to an informal, more - like - someone’s - house - than - a - restaurant that improbably serves something both of us can stand to eat for breakfast. For me, quesadillas. For Paul, french toast. We sat and listened to Johnny Cash’s cover album, “The Man Comes Around”, which was funny the first time I heard his version of Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus two years ago, but that morning, by the time he’d mutilated Danny Boy I was ready to get up and leave. Then he sang Desperado, and after, “You better let somebody love you (let somebody love you!) you’d better let somebody lo-oo-ve you…before it’s too laaaaate,” I could hear the cook singing her own backup: “I love grease, I love grease, I looooove greeeeease,” and I was happy again.

Apparently the restaurant was celebrating Weekend Dad Day, because after a particularly odious dad came to pick up his son (not, as I’d originally thought, the four year old girl he lavished all his attention on before yelling at his son) another father showed up to pick up his two daughters. The ten year old daughter pretended to be asleep while the four year old basked in the attention she was getting from both parents. When she realized, however, that this was all prepatory to going to school, she collapsed in great wailing tears.

She begged her mom to let her stay with her all day instead, while her dad said things like, “You love school!” and then, to the mom (and, I suspect, the restaurant at large) “The minute she gets there, she’s laughing and playing with her friends.”

I felt sad for the daughter until I saw her face over her mom’s shoulder, beaming in a particularly hateful, “Wow, look at all the attention I just manipulated out of everyone here!” way. The mom and dad worked in impressively genial tandem to usher her out, and when the mom came back inside the restaurant she said, “Man, that was hard,” and put her hand on her forehead for a moment.

When we were finished eating, we began walking to the subway.

Paul That girl was really sad.

Sage She was, wasn’t she. It’s hard to see someone feeling bad, and not know how to help.

Paul It is. But you know what?

Sage What’s that, babe?

Paul When you don’t want to go to school? You should go to a school like she does. Where you can play inside - NOT outside, but inside - and have a good time, and laugh. Like her dad said.

Sage, amused that Paul is picking up the eavesdropping habit Right. Do you…do you ever think about going to school?

Paul Yes.

Sage, heart in her throat And…what do you think about it?

Paul I think, school is…phblechchchchch.

When we arrived home that night, the apartment building was having plumbing problems. The toilets didn’t work, the faucets did nothing but sputter ominously. Paul went off to do paper crafts, his new obsession and I sat down to whine about the water problem on Psychobabble. One of the other players asked why I didn’t just go buy some bottled water. I felt like an idiot for not thinking of that first, and after Paul and I had gotten our shoes on we trooped to the convenience store to buy three large bottles.

It wasn’t until Paul and I were walking down the hall towards our apartment that I realized why the whole scenario felt so strangely familiar. Granted, the last time I hauled water for the yurt, Paul was two and a half, barely toddling next to me instead of carrying one of the water bottles. But otherwise? It was time travel.