The first grown woman I ever fell in love with was a polynesian/hawaiian woman who was a waitress in the local restaurant. I don’t remember her actual name, nobody could pronounce it, everyone just called her Linda. She pronounced it “Leen-da”

Not horribly often, we would follow Sunday mass with breakfast. She was usually our waitress and our usual breakfast was waffles for mom, biscuits and gravy for dad, and cereal for my sister and I. She was tall and slender and she came to the table balancing that big tray on her hand in her short gold skirt and white apron, her order pad sticking out the back of her apron tie accentuating the curve of her backside.

I never really noticed it, for a long time.

One friday night they played “South Pacific” on the local affiliate, and I watched it sprawled out on the orange couch. Suddenly Linda, who was the only non-round eyed person I had ever met, became unspeakably exotic, as I watched Lieutenant Cable mooning over Liat. My saturday was filled with daydreams and as Sunday mass approached I managed to get my sister whining about breakfast; they wouldn’t go out for me, but for my sister, Dad would take us all to the restaurant.

So we went.

When we got there, (Mass seemed to take an awfully long time that morning) I sat next to the window, opposite my sister, next to Dad. Linda, as usual, came to take our order, and when she got to me, I deepened my voice as deep as a thirteen year old kid can and ordered “Two eggs and bacon with toast and coffee, please”

Mom and dad looked at me as if snakes were coming out of my ears, but let it stand.

I had had hot tea before, but never coffee. Dad drank it with milk, so I figured that was the way to do it. When it came, I carefully poured a splorp of milk into my coffee, and went to work on my eggs. The idea of drinking something hot with a meal was fairly new to me, but i sipped and discovered that it didn’t taste nearly as good as it smelled, but it was OK. I certainly wasn’t going to act like a KID, and ruin my new image. I did enjoy breakfast enough that I don’t think I ever ordered cereal again.

For a lot of years after that, every time I went to the restaurant she would look at me and ask “The usual?” and i would smile and she’d bring it, exactly as I had ordered that morning. We had developed an understanding.

The restaurant changed hands several times but she stayed waitressing there until I was in my 20’s. My first job, in fact, was a bagger at a local grocery store, and I would walk to the restaurant for lunch, and eat on my tip money.

Over the years I learned that she had met and married a man who was on leave from Korea, and he’d brought her back home from exotic Hawaii to bland and bleak Northwest Indiana, the area unique in all the earth in having absolutely no tourist trade whatsoever. Not long after he’d brought her there he died, and instead of escaping, she put down roots and stayed. I was painfullly shy and would never have been so bold as to be personal with her, but in retrospect I think there was a summer during which if I’d asked her out she would have said yes, and one of my very few regrets in life is that I never did.

I still remember her smile, and I still remember her voice. I never knew how old she actually was, nor what ever became of her. Sometimes the memories are better than the reality anyway.