december 2015 MARKETPLACEcontracosta.com 77 price. No need to worry. We’ll prepare everything very nice…very nice. Ok…Ok,” and walked away before anyone could respond. There were few people in the restaurant, and as I caught my father’s eye I thought I knew what he was thinking- that the restaurateur saw our large party as an opportunity to pad our bill, but we were so wrong. Two waiters soon returned and began setting the table as another server carried a tray with small white porcelain cups and two large pots of tea. The owner personally served Nanna a cup and bowed as he set her tea on the table in front of her. When he left, Granny said, “I think that man is sweet on me.” We all laughed. And for our meal, waiters brought out dishes of food beginning with an egg-drop soup, and then several rice plates with chicken and beef and pork, cooked in a medley of different sauces; two large bowls of mixed Chinese vegetables, and a huge fried fish with its head still attached and an eye that stared up at you. The waiters personally served granny’s food, first, and waited patiently for her to look-up at them before graciously placing portions of food on her plate. After serving her, they put the dishes on the large Lazy Suzan in the center of the table so the rest of us could serve ourselves. At first, I thought the waiters’ difference towards Nanna was for show or a choreographed performance dictated by the restaurant’s owner. But the servers seemed genuine in their attentiveness towards grandma, as if they were really honored to serve her. And, perhaps, intuitively or instinctively Nanna seemed to understand the waiters’ intentions, and allowed herself to be waited on without her usual disagreeable remarks. At the end of the evening, when the owner walked over and nonchalantly slipped the bill on a small plastic tray in front of my father and walked away, I watched him stare at the check without picking it up. So I reached for the bill and read the charge, and was astonished at the price. I knew there had to be some mistake. I looked up to see the owner standing by the bar, got-up from the table and walked over to him. “There has to be a mistake,” I quietly said, handing the owner back his bill. “There’s no mistake, sir. Are you not happy with your bill?” He replied, looking-up at me. He handed the check back and, once again, I looked at the paper in my hand. “I see the actual cost of our food written here…and then, here, you discounted our meal by forty percent. I mean, we’re grateful…we’re not complaining, but please tell me why you are giving us such a good price?” “In Chinese Confucius culture, we honor our elderly and our ancestors. Your grandma is blessed, because…as you say she is 90 years old and has all her family around her. The least I can do is also honor her by giving you a good price. Please don’t worry, sir. I am very happy,” and he walked away. Now, 25 years later, I am 71 years old and although my grandma passed away so very long ago, I often think about that evening when a Chinese restauranteur honored Nanna on her 90th birthday. However, the circumstances of growing older for me and so many others my age are quite different than they were for my grandmother. Up until her death, she lived with family members and was taken care of by her descendants while, today, an increasing number of older Americans live lives in isolation and are virtually left alone. We sometimes encounter them on our streets, at the market, in stores where they may start-up impromptu conversations with us out of the blue about all manner of things which we generally take little interest in. If we’re sensitive to their need to talk we might exchange pleasantries for a while until we realize that we’ll have to extricate ourselves from them, because they will talk on and on and, maybe, continue talking to no one in particular even after we’re gone. Many of our elderly are starved for attention and someone to talk to; for someone to recognize their humanity and remove their sense of isolation; even if just for a moment. After my wife, Jennifer, passed away in 2011 I imagined that I, too, could become one of these isolated elderly waylaying strangers on the streets or in public places instigating make-you-run-away conversations, and that vision of myself scared me. That’s when I decided to channel my need for a false sense of companionship with strangers into creative writing; although, some would say that writing fiction is, in reality, an escape from reality. That’s not how I saw it. Writing got me out of bed in the morning and gave me something positive and challenging to do. It stirred my imagination in the development of a story and characters to populate the narrative, and it allowed me to reflect on my own life experience. Every day over the past two years, for at least two hours a day, I’ve spent at my computer creating a story. And I am proud to tell you that I have completed my first novel I am now self-publishing. You also should be pleased as well, because you no longer run the risk of my confronting you on the streets or in a store in idle conversation. Woody Carter’s first novel, Narada’s Children: A Visionary Tale of Two Cities, is available on Amazon.com and the first three chapters are free.
Contra Costa Marketplace - Dec 2015
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