The recent closing of our Alternative Family’s favorite hangout, the Three-Star Diner, is a loss I continue to feel.
An Alternative Parent (long before gay dads were a demographic), my daughter Sammy now lives across the river with her husband and my grandson Moses. Her mom Nancy and her husband, Joe, are happily ensconced on a mountain in Virginia. But I’m still in the apartment across the hall from where our family began.
The Three-Star was a place that had known Nancy, Sammy and me back when we were all together, all helping each other grow up.
And now it’s gone.
We started regular weekend lunches at the Three-Star more than 30 years ago, during Sammy’s yellow-food-only period, when Nancy and I discovered the diner as a solution to the challenge of providing a monochromic menu. Our regular waitress, Laura, the owner’s niece, was an early member of Sammy’s fan club, and would consult on the best yellow items on the menus.
French Toast was a staple (maple syrup was allowed for its golden tints), orange juice was considered close enough to yellow on the spectrum, and their lemon meringue and coconut custard pies remained favorites of all concerned, even on non-yellow days.
In addition to our weekly outings, the diner was where we together we celebrated birthdays and significant accomplishments. But most importantly, the Three Star was a welcoming place where we were able to get together and share food we didn’t have to prepare, served on dishes we didn’t have to wash.
The Mike Tyson & the Teenage Beauty Contestant Rape Discussion
When Sammy was 12, we all saw Thelma & Louise. Later, she asked about rape. Nancy had long established as a parenting philosophy that if Sammy asked a question, at whatever age, it was to be answered.
So, she had a heart-to-heart discussion with Sammy in the bedroom, and then we all talked about street smarts, avoiding situations involving men you didn’t know in rooms with closed doors, and, above all, the importance of paying attention to her intuition. Sammy seemed OK with the information, and her mother and I had a shared sense of accomplishment, accompanied by the realization that we were entering a phase of New Things to Worry About.
Sometime later, we were in the middle of a yellow brunch (I seem to remember mine was a Spanish Omelet), when we noticed someone at a nearby table reading a newspaper with the Mike Tyson rape story as the headline. Nancy and I, never ones to let an opportunity for lesson-reinforcement go by, asked Sammy why that would never happen to her.
At this point, it’s important to note that, although Sammy was 12, she often appeared much younger. This was one of her eight-year-old days. She thought a bit, and announced — in what has become in the retelling of this tale, a voice heard throughout the Three Star —that she would never go to a man’s hotel room unless she had already decided to have sex with him.
Laura almost dropped four plates of eggs Benedict, and the looks on the faces of the four older women at the next table were enough for us to realize that perhaps we could skip dessert and leave before someone called Child Protective Services. It was a memorable moment.
All Good Things
At long last, Laura’s family sold the building, announcing that the diner would close. I stopped in to show Laura the most recent family pictures of Sammy and ordered a yellow meal with a coffee chaser.
The lemon meringue pie was, as always, delicious. Laura and I hugged when I left, and I came home to write this:
Goodbye, Silver Star. We shall not see your like again.
The Inadvertent Grandparent Is Reading …
… with his grandson:
My Grandma Lives in Florida by Ed Shankman and Dave O’Neil
Moses: “This is a good story about a family of crocodiles that love each other and don’t eat people.”
The Pigeon HAS to Go to School by Mo Willems
Moses: “The pigeon is scared the teachers won’t like him but they do. He is very cool and only has one big eye. Don’t EVER let him drive the bus.”
… after Moses goes to sleep:
Because of Poetry, I Have a Really Big House by Kent Johnson
Kent Johnson, author of the controversial cult classic, A Question Mark Above the Sun*, is a vital voice, gadfly of the poetry establishment. His trenchant criticism, along with his own at-times-enchanting poetry, make this hybrid memoir-poetry collection a must-read for anyone who has ever felt alone in wondering what the hell is going on with contemporary American poetry. Love him or hate him, Johnson’s is a voice that needs to be heard. And I love him.
Flight of the Jaguar by Halim Madi
This beautiful volume, illustrated by the poet (he had me with the cover), is a touching, insightful portrait of immigrant experience, of what is taken both in and away in the process of growing into a new culture.
The poems are short and memorable. I keep coming back to one in which the poet decides, at the age of 30, to become a jaguar, “Looking people straight in the eyes / And now / Biting my friends.” I’m making a list of people to whom I’m going to give this book.
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Poetry is most often experienced unintentionally at private ceremonies such as weddings and funerals, with eighty percent of the potential audience and more than ninety percent of the current audience reporting that they’ve been exposed to poetry at one of these private occasions.
— Poetry in America Study commissioned by the Poetry Foundation
James W. Gaynor, author of 20 Poems about Love + Marriage Inappropriate 4 Weddings and 20 Poems About Life + Death Inappropriate 4 Funerals
Cover Art by Kelly McKinley
Featured Photo: Shutterstock
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Read James W. Gaynor also on:
Fleas on the Dog https://fleasonthedog.com/
Dodging the Rain https://dodgingtherain.