[Scene from A Christmas Story. The Peking duck no longer smiles at the Old Man.]
In 1993, The then Missus-Eventually-To-Be and I went on our first one of these, and we’ve done so every December 23rd since. (Which, yes, made 2012 the twentieth time.)
That first year, we had a few things generally to celebrate, aside from the holiday itself. Eleven months before, on January 1, I’d moved sorta-kinda-ever-so-cautiously to this area, from the Richmond, VA neck of the woods, expressly to be closer to her. I didn’t move straight to this city, mind you, but to a town about forty minutes away — one with the small-town feel I was used to, and hoping to continue. I was jobless and all but flat broke then [*], so I took as a priority the getting of work… Yet, y’know, a common downside to small towns is that most of the work to be had must be had in nearby cities. So I eventually scored a series of part-time/temporary jobs down here, and by the fall was working enough that a date-date didn’t feel like an extravagance. Indeed, in October we’d abandoned all pretense at tentativeness and moved in together, to our first house: another thing to celebrate. And we had rich creative lives, as well, especially thanks to The METB‘s course of studies for a Masters degree in English (“creative writing emphasis,” as the University said).
So we splurged, that first year, on a meal at a splurge-worthy downtown restaurant called Chez Pierre. It was then a small, elegant, intimately lit, fireplaced and stone-walled nook of a place on the same block as the old Federal courthouse, and it was easy to love: the service was personable, the atmosphere relaxed — take as long as you want! — and the food spectacular. (When they had to relocate a few years later, to a giant sprawling brick pile in the area known as Midtown, we never did get used to the changes; Chez Pierre finally changed hands, and then, after what was widely felt to be a slow decline, finally went out of business last year.)
But — and this would become the enduring (and to me, endearing) little hook to the Christmas-date tradition — The METB did not know in advance that we’d be eating there. She knew only that we were dressing up (if not strictly, given our circumstances, upscale). And en route to dinner, I drove a circuitous route, expressly to keep her guessing…
[The scene: North Florida, USA, the interior of a car — not their own — currently occupied by a human couple and a micro-canine. It is around 6:00 pm: He and She, with The Pooch, are on their way home from work. They left work early today in order to rent a car (this one) so that they could leave their own car at their mechanic’s for its periodic maintenance the next day: they needed to get to both the car-rental agency and the garage before either place closed at 6. The evening before, they left work early in order to meet with their handyman to discuss the next round of “projects.” This came on the heels of the second weekend in a row on which they had overnight guests, on the weekdays between which they had various medical and other appointments, following weeks of, well, more or less the same. And it came before a day on which two medical appointments were scheduled, as well as the need — of course — to return the rental car and pick up the owned one before either place closed at 6.]
