“Waiting is, until fullness. I grok in fullness.”
A bench by the dam invites quiet waiting and enjoying the weather.
In my halcyon days, I felt that if you didn’t celebrate on the official day … birthday, Christmas, anniversary, whatever … that you’d blown it.
You’d think with the passing of time, one would be even more eager to get right into whatever life event has presented itself. After all, this IS tomorrow … we are past waiting for a rainy day. Get out your umbrella, the rain has arrived. Who knows how much time we’ve got left? (Really, does anyone know? We could any of us be hit tomorrow by a runaway beer truck.) Life is ironic and never what you expect. As it turns out, I am infinitely more patient than I was when I was younger.
Near death experiences notwithstanding, I’m in no rush to get anywhere or do anything. There’s going to be tomorrow. I just know it. And if not? Oh well.
Our favorite thing to do to celebrate anything and everything is go out to eat Japanese food. I am a little demented about tempura and our local Japanese restaurant’s special maki roll, the Wanakura roll. Garry orders the sashimi special.
On average, the culinary quality of dining establishments in the Blackstone Valley varies from barely acceptable to so awful I can’t talk about it without weeping. The ultimate in haute cuisine is a burger. Other than that, you can get mediocre pizza from a variety of national and regional chains as well as a couple of local pizza places run by Greeks who don’t grasp the whole “pizza should have a crisp crust” concept. They also serve sandwiches, some of which are nearly edible. There are a few appalling Italian restaurants, one that isn’t half bad, and a variety of places that serve tasteless greasy Chinese food but survive because they have good bars … and then there is Wanakura, the restaurant that keeps us from going mad with insatiable longing for a decent meal. Wonder of wonders, it serves our favorite cuisine: Japanese food.
Wanakura is a small restaurant located in a virtually empty strip mall off Route 140 in North Milford. It’s as good a Japanese restaurant as we’ve found anywhere, from Boston to Washington DC. I believe Wanakura is sure proof that God answers our prayers.
We couldn’t go to dinner this evening, even though we would have liked to go. Without going into gory detail, Garry recently had some delicate, but not life-threatening, surgery. Sitting on a hard bench at the sushi bar is not in the cards today. Nor tomorrow.
So, it will be Tuesday when we celebrate our 22nd anniversary. Every restaurant and personal care establishment in the Valley is closed on Monday. So Tuesday it shall be. Or, if necessary, Wednesday. We don’t need to hurry.
As Michael Valentine Smith used to say: “Waiting is. One must grok in fullness.”
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I love this post! I just finished re-reading Stranger in a Strange Land after 30 years. Congratulations!
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Still surprisingly good isn’t it!
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Happy Anniversary! Hope you have many, many more. Love to you in huge chunks.
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Thanks. Hard to believe it’s already 22 years. And me only 39!
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Since moving to the fartherest southwestern corner of Georgia our choice of ‘fine dining’ is limited to Pizza Hut, Hardee’s and Huddle House. If the price of gasoline does not go down soon, trips across the bridge, the state line or even across counties will be archaic!
My mom was a stickler for being sure events were celebrated ON THE DAY! If not right on, to her it was just simply missed. What’s in a day or a date? It is the celebration that matters❤
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Right you are. It sounds like your cuisine is almost as good as ours. Oy. Sorry!
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At this precise moment I’m grounded. A returning ailment has me fighting for a position that doesn’t hurt my back. We are blessed with dozens of really great restaurants in the Portland, OR area. It has something to do with the great diversity in ethic groups. Japanese restaurants are actually run by Japanese, with a huge Japanese clientele. The same thing goes for any other culture be it, Thai, Korean or Chinese. I have a strange little plaza right across from my apartment complex that has a Japanese restaurant, a Korean restaurant & a Pizza Kaboose with a great salad bar. LOL Now there’s cultural diversity for you.
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I share you pain. I am currently investigating getting a scooter I can afford and that might be portable enough to fit in our “no it isn’t an SUV and no we don’t have a chair lift” car. It sucks and hurts, too. Valium helps relax muscles more than it helps relax brains, by the way. Try it if you have some around. Even if the real cause are bones out of place, all the muscles nearby tend to spasm when things get funky in there.
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Our one and only good restaurant is entirely Japanese-run and I think every person of oriental descent eats there. Not like there’s a big choice unless they cook it themselves (I do cook some Chinese … I leaned a long time ago) but you’ve got more diversity and probably better food in your one restaurant than we have in the entire group of towns here. Sad. Very sad.
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