THE BEST LAID PLANS
By Jeff S. Martindale
 

It seemed like a simple plan: to have a nice dinner at the beach.   Little did we know that our best laid plans would – well, I guess you know how that cliché ends, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

The date was April 20, 2001. The evening – a beautiful Friday twilight – started well enough.   Our boys – well rested after a playful morning on the beach – were decked out in nice clothes and eager to fill their tummies with french fries.  Lana and I donned nice clothes; “nice” being a relative term for those on a beach vacation (read: golf shirt, denim shorts, and tennis shoes).  The boys’ afternoon snack of crackers, cheese slices, and popcorn – designed to hold them over until dinner – was beginning to wear off, and our collective stomachs rumbled with high hopes of a nice seafood dinner and, more specifically for mommy and daddy, a seafood nachos appetizer.

Thoughts of the appetizer tapped a long dormant craving and sent our saliva glands into overdrive.  On our first beach vacation together, we ate a similar starter in a Destin, Florida restaurant the likes of which we’d never eaten since.  When the server brought us a plate stacked high with crispy nacho chips covered with a blanket of hot melted cheese and boiled shrimp the size of my fist, we looked at each other with wide eyes and open mouths, wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into.  The first bite, however, took us to new heights of comestible pleasure.  By the time we finished the appetizer (leaving little room for our salad and entrée, which by that point were anticlimactic), our stomachs were sated, and the appetizer bar had thus been raised.

We returned to Destin the following year and revisited the same restaurant on our first night to indulge our tummies once again.  Once seated and eager with anticipation, we opened our menus and found, to our dismay, no shrimp nachos on the menu.  We quickly summoned our server, who confirmed our disappointment.  So, we immediately left the restaurant, and have searched for shrimp nachos ever since.

Until now.

While thumbing through an area restaurant guide for dinner ideas on our first night in Perdido Key, Lana found a menu for a self-described ‘Cajun-Mex’ restaurant that, lo and behold, offered a seafood nachos appetizer.  When she brought me the menu and pointed out the Holy Grail of appetizers on page one, you’d have thought we were a couple of school kids who’d just been told summer vacation would last until Christmas.  After nearly eight years, we had finally found another restaurant that served the best appetizer we’d ever let cross our lips.

We quickly showered and before dressing the boys—no small task given the alluring roar of the surf drifting in through the open patio door, not to mention the seemingly endless amount of sand to be washed, picked, and scrubbed from two anxious children with french fries on their minds.  Once finished, we looked each other over and deemed ourselves ready.

I’d never been to a ‘Cajun-Mex’ restaurant before, but figured it similar to Tex-Mex – just a few hundred miles to the east, perhaps.  We were glad the restaurant was conveniently located in a small, pastel-colored strip center a few blocks from our condo.  After spending eight long hours in our tightly packed minivan the day before, our tushies were tired of sitting, not to mention the boys weren’t eager for another extended ride in their car seats.  So, we piled in the van and prepared ourselves for a short drive to shrimp nachos and succulent seafood.

This is where I should’ve known that it was too good to be true.

“I don’t see the restaurant name on the sign,” I said to Lana, pointing out the conspicuous vacancies on the marquee as we turned off the highway.

“Are you sure?”

“I think so.”

“Well, maybe they’re new,” she replied, always the optimist.

The sight of so many empty parking spaces should’ve been the first clue, but we nonetheless forged ahead and meandered through the small maze of sky blue and pastel pink buildings in search of hors d'oeuvre nirvana.

“I don’t see it,” I said, my disappointment evident.  “Do you?”

“No.”

We sighed.

“Maybe we missed it,” I said with more hope than I felt.  We turned around and drove through the complex again.

“It’s not here,” Lana said.

Damn!

A closer look revealed many vacancies in the complex, and even the miniature golf course next door – located on prime real estate: a major road across from condoplexes teeming with vacationing families – was eerily empty.  We got our hopes up for a great dinner, only to have our cravings slammed shut like the lid on an old toy chest.

“What do we do now?”

‘Good question,’ I thought.  I pulled our trusted Ford Windstar to the edge of the highway – our egg shell blue condo casting a long shadow before us in the twilight – and faced a crossroads decision.

“I don’t know,” I said.  “Where do you want to go?”

Turn right and we’d travel the familiar road whence we came the day before – past the Orange Beach high rises, expensive homes on stilts, and strip shopping centers constructed to lure hard-earned cash out of wallets like mine.
Turn left and we’d trek the unfamiliar route past our condo toward Pensacola, where we had no knowledge of what we’d find.

Lana looked at me.  I shrugged my shoulders.

“I don’t care,” she said.  “You decide.”

I turned left.

Mistake number two.

What was supposed to be a short drive to a sumptuous meal quickly digressed into an odyssey with no end in sight.
We drove east along the lazy coastal highway, crossed a long bridge spanning a boat-filled waterway, and came to a busy intersection. There we saw a sign with big arrows directing tourists – unsuspecting ones, I now believe – toward a number of eating establishments just miles down the road.  We followed its advice and turned right. 

For five miles—and what felt like half an hour—we drove through predominantly residential neighborhoods lined with 1960’s-era ranch houses with sandy yards where grass was only a dream. The sole restaurant we saw was a small, pink-painted cinder block greasy spoon with a touristy name (Rusty Fish Hook, I think) that evoked memories of tetanus shots from my youth.  Why anyone thought a cheesy name like that would make hungry tourists stop on impulse and buy its food for their children is beyond me. The number of pickup trucks in the parking lot also concerned me, and led me to conclude that few men wearing Tommy Hilfiger golf shirts had darkened its doorways.  I was struck by the image of a gum-chomping middle-aged waitress – perhaps it was Flo from Mel’s Diner on the old ‘Alice’ TV series – pulling a pen from her beehive hairdo before asking me which of 12 different ways did I want my catfish fried.

We drove on.

After making a U-turn, we returned to the highway – past the Rusty Fish Hook [“Kiss my grits, sugar!”] – and decided to make that right turn after all.

Our frustration was painfully evident. Will now begged for french fries and Jack fussed to be anywhere but his car seat.  We decided to stop at the first family restaurant we found.  After maybe fifteen minutes of driving, we crossed the bridge into Orange Beach and saw a restaurant to our immediate left.

“How’s that one look?” I asked Lana.

“Looks okay to me,” she replied.  I turned off the highway and parked the minivan, much to the delight of Jack, who, when I loosened his straps, practically leapt from the seat.  The restaurant name was “Outriggers”, and I knew I’d found “the” place when I saw a man wearing a polo shirt and khaki slacks remove his daughter from the back seat of a nearby maroon conversion van.

We walked the boys through a windy portico and into a dark lobby, where we were greeted by a huge aquarium, its brightly-colored fish stood out like stars in the midnight sky.  The evening’s specials, written in luminescent color on a back-lighted black board, announced in ‘70’s fashion that blackened grouper was the choicest item on the menu.  A perky teenage girl led us to a table where the dining room extended over the water.  It had a striking view of the gulf, and I was silently relieved the odyssey was over.

Or so I thought.

We settled in and began the restaurant routine. First, we put the kids in their seats (a booster seat for Will and a high chair for Jack), then took out their sippy cups. Lana placed crackers at hand in case the food was slow coming out, and scanned the children’s menu for french fries. I moved all loose items (napkins, silverware, salt and pepper shakers, candles, etc.) out of reach of their curious little arms.

The waitress soon appeared and, with the customary pleasantries, took our drink orders.  Her inviting smile and warm demeanor seemed pleasant enough, but I found the sight of green-colored gum peeking out between her teeth, not to mention the lovely masticating sounds that she made, to be disconcerting. Her face bore some pretty bad acne scars, too, but I ignored it having myself suffered through teenage years marked by enough acne medicine to cover the infield at Fenway Park.

No sooner had we placed our dinner orders when Will began to fuss.

“I’m okay,” he whined, though we knew he wasn’t. “I go potty.”  We only recently had postponed Will’s potty training what with the few successes far surpassed by the many frustrations.  He, nonetheless, recognized the biological urges, and we figured he needed to pee.  Volunteering to take him to the restroom, I lifted him from the booster seat and walked him toward the lobby. 

By the time we got there, Will’s fusses had degraded into cries.  “I go outside,” he said.  So, I bypassed the rest rooms and exited the restaurant through the front door.

I sat down on a low and very uncomfortable concrete stoop bordering a flowerbed and tried to console Will, who was growing increasingly troubled.  We loitered outside for a few minutes and reentered the restaurant when I felt the time was right—which all parents know is a highly subjective judgment call based on your perception that you and your child can return to a social situation and neither have a complete nervous breakdown.

On the way to the table, I diverted Will’s attention to the lobby aquarium on the chance it would further distract him from whatever had gotten under his skin.

“What’s that?” he asked, pointing at something in the swirling waters.  He must have asked me that a dozen times.  “It’s a starfish,” I replied.  Then a catfish, and a tetra, and God knows whatever else he pointed at.  He didn’t want to leave the aquarium, but a strategic mention of the french fries awaiting him sufficiently changed his mind.

We were on our way to the table, walking past other diners who watched with admiring eyes as I led my son by the hand, when Will stumbled over something.  I don’t know what it was.  It could’ve been anything. A fold in the carpet. A piece of lint. God knows it didn’t take much.  At any rate, he fell to his knees, and began crying again.

“It’s okay, Will,” I said as I picked him up and carried him to the table. I set him in the booster seat, but he wanted nothing of it.  He fussed, cried, and wanted out of that chair post haste.  Nearby diners looked at us – more from pity than annoyance, I hoped – as Will’s cries filled the room.  The boys’ food had already been served but Will, to our surprise, wasn’t interested in his french fries and grilled cheese sandwich.

“Get down!” he cried repeatedly.

“Your turn,” I said to Lana.  She took a quick bite from her dinner roll before lifting Will from his chair and walking him to the lobby, where his incessant cries finally faded to silence.

While Will’s (and our) ordeal was just beginning, Jack, on the other hand, was in rare form.  He downed his fries like nobody’s business, and flirted with those at nearby tables.  Jack stared at somebody until they looked his way, then he flashed a brilliant, gap-toothed smile that melted even the hardest of hearts. Jack found his audience to be engaging.  They oohed, aahed, and talked back, and Jack returned their interest with a wave I can best describe as a cross between the Tomahawk Chop and a shoo-fly swat.  Jack’s moment in the limelight was short lived as the familiar cries of an upset toddler grew louder in our collective ears.  I looked up and saw Lana leading Will – tears streaming down his face – to the table.

“What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, walking him around the table to where I sat.

“Daddy carry,” he said, arms extended, wanting me to pick him up.  Our Caesar salads had arrived but I was too engrossed in comforting Will than eat mine.  With the aroma of fresh dinner rolls and Caesar dressing teasing my hunger pangs, I sat Will in my lap and consoled him.  He bordered on hysterics; others within earshot might have thought ‘histrionics.’  An idle waiter stopped by (shouldn’t he be filling somebody’s water glass? I thought) to pat Will on the head and ask if there was anything he could do.

There wasn’t.

I let my salad be and walked Will back through the restaurant and outside.  This time, he wanted no part of the aquarium.  He wanted only to be held and I obliged though it didn’t completely stop his crying.  I held him, sang to him, and rocked him in my lap, doing my best to ease his anxiety, but I could only sit on that stoop for so long before my ass cried ‘foul’.  Besides, my stomach had zoomed past growling and was now in full roar.  After a few minutes, I went back inside, to Will’s dismay.

When I sat down in my chair, I saw that Jack had eaten most of his food (that is, most of the food on his plate was gone, having either been eaten, smeared, or dropped on the floor). Lana ate her salad at a breakneck pace.  I then realized we’d separately come to the same conclusion.

I arose from my seat and approached a group of servers standing idly by a drink cart.  “Please box up our food to go,” I told our waitress, still chomping on green gum.  “We’re not going to be able to stay.”  She looked at me through sympathetic eyes and quickly disappeared into the kitchen.

Will had grown completely inconsolable and there wasn’t a patron within 50 feet whose ears weren’t ringing from the sound of his piercing cries.  The scene reminded me of a similar episode from another beach vacation. Two years earlier, I left a Seaside, Florida restaurant before my meal was served to put Will – then only 14 months old but fussing much the same – to bed at our rental house, where I later sat on the couch and ate my $50 entrée from a styrofoam container with a plastic fork.

Fortunately, it took only a few minutes for the waitress to emerge with a plastic bag stuffed with styrofoam containers and plastic silverware.  Lana had already taken Will outside while Jack and I stayed behind to collect our food.  When I walked to the lobby to pay the bill – toting Jack in one arm and lugging the food in the other, a woman (the manager, I assumed) asked me, “Is there anything we can do for you tonight?” It took all willpower to not respond with a sarcastic comment.  I figured she asked out of compassion (or was it sympathy?). Either that or she wanted to cover her ass in case her staff had caused Will’s fit. At any rate, I gave her the benefit of the doubt.

“No,” I replied.  “I think he’s just had a long day.”  With that I signed over a couple of traveler’s checks and walked through the front door for the last time.

Lana and Will paced the sidewalk under the portico when I saw them next.  The beautiful day has progressed to a pleasant evening.  A brisk breeze blew in from the sea, and the setting sun shimmered low over the distant horizon.
“Blues Clues music!” called Will from his car seat, asking to hear his favorite cassette tape.  At this point, I would’ve played him Marilyn Manson to calm him down.

We buckled everyone in and began the short drive to our condo.  Crossing over the bridge from Orange Beach to Perdido Key, Lana and I reflected on that night in Seaside and wondered if, like then, Will was just tired.  The enticing smells of our entrees wafted through the van and made me press a little harder on the accelerator pedal.  We were almost there when, over the sounds of Ray Charles scatting to a jazzy kids tune, Lana spoke those words parents dread when confined in close quarters with their kids.

“Will threw up.”

Hey, Hey. Shooba Dee Day.

“How bad is it?” I asked, craning my neck to see the damage in the rear view mirror.

“It’s not pretty.”

Aaaaahh. Beep Bop Bay. Hey, Hey.

I saw her grab a towel – one she kept handy for moments like this – from the back seat and thrust it under Will’s chin to catch as much, ahem, stuff as she could.  He seemed to be the better for it, having calmed down and almost stopped crying.  Fortunately, we were only moments away from our condo, and therefore endured only a few minutes of eau de bile.

We shuttled everyone from the car lickety-split.  Given the option of cleaning pukey child or pukey car seat, I chose the latter, preferring the option that wouldn’t squirm, talk back, or throw up again.  I grabbed two bath towels—ensuring they were sufficiently damp for the job—and went outside to clean up the mess, whose stench now permeated the enclosed car.  Lana was right that it wasn’t a pretty sight.  He’d pretty well soaked the shoulder harness, and picking out the “stuff” – which I recognized as bits of popcorn and cheese he’d snacked on that afternoon – made me forget about my appetite. I cleaned the seat as best I could without industrial-strength cleansers, and returned to the room.

Lana – God bless her – had stripped Will down to his diaper after giving him a good once over with a damp rag.  Children’s songs from a Cedarmont Kids video (‘School Days’, I think) filled the room, and the boys were rapt at attention, eyes focused like lasers on the TV screen.  The Cedarmont Kids had come to the rescue once again.

The sun had dropped below the horizon when Lana and I finally ate our dinners at a glass-topped table.  The sound of the wind-whipped surf drifting through an open window provided a relaxing backdrop for our meal, which, thanks to the miracle of CFC’s, stayed nice and warm during the ordeal.

I sat across the table from Lana – who dug into her grouper special with the provided plastic silverware – and was overcome by a feeling of contentment.  Despite all the evening’s expectations and mishaps, I reflected on the moment – Will laying on the couch, naked but for a diaper, staring contently (and quietly!) at the TV screen; Jack standing three feet from the television, thumb firmly inserted in his mouth, the other hand stuck inside his yellow plaid overalls Napoleon-style; the soothing sounds of the surf in my ears; my wife sitting before me – and smiled contently.

This was the life for me.  There was no place I wanted to be but right there with my beautiful family.  I felt as comfortable and secure as I’d ever felt.  When the evening started, I never suspected it would transpire as it did, but I was glad – for once – I didn’t get what I wanted.  If I had, I would’ve missed the long drive, fussy cries, comforting hugs, quick exits, Ray Charles, throw up, plastic silverware, and sounds of children’s songs dancing in my ears.

Before I know it, I’ll wake up one morning and my boys – so young, cuddly, and innocent now – will be grown up and gone.  They’ll cuddle more with their girlfriends than with me.  They’ll want to hang out with their friends and seen less with their parents.  They’ll ask me more for spending money than to read them a story.   I’ll miss their ‘Hi, Daddy!’ big hug greetings when I come home from work, as though they haven’t seen me in a week.  I’ll miss singing the ‘soap song” while lathering up a rag at bath time.  I’ll miss Will making a production out of ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ or ‘We Love Trash’, and Jack sticking his face through the staircase spindles so he can touch his nose to mine.  

I’ll miss the cute way Will says his prayers and the loving way Jack lays his head on my shoulder. I’ll miss grappling with them when I brush their teeth, and urging them to use the potty when they have to pee pee.  I’ll miss the way Will strokes my face when he comes to my side of the bed in the morning (“Oh, hi, Daddy”), and I’ll miss them wanting to climb in bed with me (“Up the bed”) before I get up.  I could spend hours watching them eat, and I’ll always want to sneak into their rooms at night and watch them sleep—tenderly placing my hand on their backs just to make sure they’re okay.  I’ll miss lifting their limp bodies from their car seats when they fall asleep on the ride home. And, yes, I will miss wiping their dirty bottoms and cleaning them up after they get sick. 

These are the moments I thank God that I’m alive. I’m so proud to be their father. I want them to need me—no, I need them to need me. Moments when they feel bad and look to me for comfort are priceless.  No feeling in the world could beat the feeling that overcame me that evening.

Yes, it was the perfect night.  I’m definitely glad every bit of it happened to me.

Definitely!