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Friday, April 23, 2010

Five Minute Conversations - BRETTON

Most people who know me know I’m not too interested in cooking. One day when our youngest son left for his freshman year at Washington University in St. Louis, I sat down and figured out that I had cooked or made approximately 22,000 meals since moving to my first apartment and this didn’t even include preparing school lunches, which I was pretty bad at. This is not to say I’ve lost interest in food; I’ve just lost interest in cooking it. I will occasionally make a special family meal and when we’re bored with eating out, I’ll grill a piece of chicken, add rice and broccoli and dinner is served. Pretty ironic that I wrote a small cookbook as a gift for our family and friends a few years ago! I’m lucky to have a husband who really does like to cook. But left to my own devices, I’d probably have Rice Krispies for dinner every night. This is just background so you understand why so many of my FIVE MINUTE CONVERSATIONS take place in restaurants.

My husband and I went to The Pub in Mendham for dinner one night this week. This particular restaurant has had an influx of new, younger wait staff and our waitress was one I hadn’t seen before. She seemed pleasant and friendly and midway through our dinner I asked for her name which started our five minute conversation. She told us her name and she even spelled it. Since it’s such an unusual name, I asked if it was a family name and she said, “No, it isn’t. I was adopted when I was ten days old and that was the name I came with.”

She volunteered that she loves her parents and that she recently started chatting with her birth mother on Facebook. She doesn’t feel the need for much more contact than that and apparently neither does her birth mother for now who has a family and children who don’t know about her. Her birth mother got pregnant when she was only 17 years old; in fact our waitress said she has a photo of her birth mother at her high school prom which shows her looking very pregnant in her prom dress. She did say that when she herself turned 17, she vowed that she was NOT going to get pregnant at such a young age so that she didn’t have to face the difficult decision her birth mother had faced.

Our waitress said she doesn’t know if she will ever have any actual contact other than internet chat with her birth mother, and she’s just fine with it the way it is. She talked about how much she loves her Mom. The wonderful part about her adoption is how confident and matter-of-fact she is about being adopted. Her adoptive parents must be very special people to have given her such a secure base and helped her to grow up to be such a happy, friendly 21 year old. The only sad part is that her birth mother doesn’t get to spend her life with such a charming young lady.

When George and I ordered a dessert to share, our young waitress said dessert would be her treat and sure enough, despite our protests, our check showed up without a charge for our chocolate cake. Of course, we left her a large enough tip to cover what she would have to pay, but it was so nice of her to even suggest that she’d cover our dessert.

As I always try to do before writing about people, I asked her if she minded if I wrote about her on my blog and that I wouldn’t use her real name. She was delighted that I asked her and said to go right ahead and to use her name. BRETTON, you have such a cool name and it was so nice to meet you!

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