I’d barely parked the car in my driveway when he jumped out and ran toward Gabriella, who was sitting on the porch, drinking wine at 6:15 p.m. My mother would have had a hissy fit over the sight of a woman drinking alone outside in daylight for all the neighborhood to see. Being my mother’s child, it gave me pause, too. And yet, if her day had been anything like mine, getting drunk on the porch seemed like a proper finale for the evening. My feelings of frustration and humiliation from the SLAP meeting wore on me like a heavy coat.
“Hey, Elijah! I missed you!” Gabriella hugged him with one hand and held on to her glass with the other.
“I missed you, too! And guess what?”
“What?”
“We got the amazing oven for you!”
Leave it to EJ.
Gabriella’s eyebrows shot up and her mouth dropped open. “What?” She shifted her eyes from Elijah’s to mine, searching for confirmation as I walked from the car and up the steps to join them. “Where is it?”
“It’s scheduled for delivery tomorrow. But we need to talk about that.”
Elijah unfurled himself from their lingering hug and threw me a questioning glance.
“Let’s get you a snack,” I said to distract him for the moment, and gave Gabriella a nod to signal we’d discuss the situation later.
“I made mozzarella cheese sticks,” she offered, which sent Elijah racing through the door and straight to the kitchen.
I joined him at the table, savoring Gabriella’s immaculate creation. The aroma of fried bread bits filled the air. True to her craft, she had seasoned the breading, stuffed bits of jalapeño into the cheese, and created a creamy dip on the side. The first bite shifted my attitude. The world was not a total loss, because these homemade cheese sticks had survived.
“Grandma, can you make cheese sticks like this?”
“No, siree, I cannot.”
He giggled. “How did she get so good at cooking?”
“Practice on top of a gift from God.”
“I want to cook like her when I grow up,” he declared with a mouth full of gooey cheese. “’Cause you were sad before you ate these cheese sticks. And now you’re happy. I want to make people happy with my food. That’s what I’m gonna call it: Happy Foods.”
Again, his words filled me with laughter. “Sounds like a good plan, EJ.”
He took off with his neighborhood friends on that extra bike, and I joined Gabriella on the porch again with a glass of my own. What good were all my manners today?
“Mind if I join you?”
“Please do.”
She scooted over on the wooden bench to give me ample room. I tilted my glass toward her and she poured. The ruby red liquid splashed into place quickly. “Whoa! That’s enough. You trying to drownallmy sorrows away?”
Gabriella laughed. “Isn’t that the purpose?”
I took a sip, sweet and robust. The evening air was warm but carried a soft, cooling breeze that made sitting outside on the porch incredibly pleasant. The sun had just begun to dip below the horizon, and the crickets and cicadas were tuning up for their nightlysongs. It was moments like these that made the slower pace of small-town life so appealing. And yet, our problems knew no zip codes.
“You want to walk to the park and swing?” she suggested.
“Swing?”
“Yeah. That’s what I do when I need to clear my mind. Swing and remember what it’s like to be carefree.”
Sounded like a good plan to me. I changed into a pair of sneakers and jeans. We left a note for Elijah in case he came looking for us and walked a few blocks to the park. Gabriella carried the wine and our cups in a backpack. There was one family—two parents and two kids—playing in the newer part of the park, with colorful slides and climbing frames, which left Gabriella and me to ourselves on the old, abandoned swings fifty yards away.
The sun had begun its descent, which gave us a bit of privacy. We had about a minute of unfiltered joy, swinging so high our bottoms lifted at the crest. The rush of air past my ears, the fleeting moment of weightlessness at the swing’s peak, brought an exhilarating freedom that I hadn’t felt in years. For those brief moments, the complications of life seemed to melt away, replaced by the simple, pure joy of flight.
But my stomach wasn’t feeling it, as my roller coaster days were far behind me. “Gabriella, we’re gonna be sick!”
