Christmas Eve

Weird night, not sad or weepy - not so far anyway, just weird.

Maybe as weird as the Christmas Eve I spent alone in 1960 when my parents and sister went to Florida and I stayed at home because I had to work. I think I went out with Brenda Willis. This Brenda, like the Brenda I would marry nine months later was beautiful. She too had a throaty sexy voice. (If my Brenda was Kim Novak, this one was Marilyn Monroe.) We went to a movie and then came back to her house. We sat in the living room with the tree while the rest of the family did something Christmas related in another part of the house, coming out once I think to acknowledge me. Brenda Willis and I had dated several years earlier. I hoped to get her to my empty house. But she was more complicated and vulnerable than I remembered and I felt guilty.

When I started dating Brenda Moser I told her with great sincerity that she had lovely brown eyes. Turns out that Brenda Moser had blue eyes. It was Brenda Willis who had brown eyes. My Brenda always thought that was funny.

Tonight, 49 years later, I also went to a movie - Avatar, the 3-D version. It was pretty good although the last half was predictable. There were several other solitary people in the audience, all of us sitting removed from everybody else. A mother and her grown daughter sat in front of me. Neither looked like science fiction types, more like women who would want to see something based on Jane Austen. They first sat side-by-side then the daughter moved one seat over, slumping down, maybe to get comfortable, maybe to sleep.

After the movie I stopped at the Waffle House in Belmont to get something to eat. The chunk of humming bird cake that Yancie, Allie and I baked this afternoon was pretty much gone. I sat next to a worn woman who wished people Merry Christmas and a man who talked about getting lumps of coal for Christmas. A little drunk maybe, he had the twangy accent and manner of the rednecks in Deliverance (the ones who were going to make Ned Beatty squeal like a pig). My waitress was a sweet girl whose baby was being tended by a tired looking young man sitting in a booth. (She told this to the worn woman.) I sat on the last stool at the counter. Two more tired women sat in the booth beside me. I quickly ate my bacon, egg and cheese biscuit. I was afraid the drunk would try to engage me in conversation and that I might do something reckless.

Coming home, stopped at the traffic light at 273 and 27, I saw two people on the side of the road. One, a woman or a small man appearing to be puking. A bigger man gently rubbed the sick person's back.