Eat at Joe's

My father and I shared a fondness for having breakfast at local greasy spoons. We used to occasionally meet on a Sunday morning at the Colonial, a hash-house-by-day, dive-bar-by-night joint in Hingham, half-way between our homes. He used to love to admire a platter of fried eggs, Irish sausages, home fries, baked beans, and toast by commenting, “What a lash!” before he fell to. Dad was always a favorite of the waitresses with his sparkling blue eyes, friendly banter (some would call it flirting), and generous tipping policy.

It was on one of these occasions he told me that he’d been diagnosed with leukemia. He wouldn’t admit to being seriously concerned, but the breakfasts took on an urgency that hadn’t been there before. I began to drive all the way to his house to pick him up. On one of these mornings, he proposed we eat at Marina Bay and see if we could roust Susan, his granddaughter and my niece, who lived there.

Susan was happy to oblige, and we walked from her plush condominium to the coffee house out on the boardwalk. All three of us were enjoying the multi-generational breakfasting, and we decided that it should become a regular event. Our new breakfast club needed a name, and we mulled over numerous possibilities. We eventually arrived at a compromise borrowed from REM and the Traveling Wilburys, and we became “The Happy and Shiny Sunday Morning Traveling Breakfast Club.”

The membership was flexible. My daughter Erin and Susan’s sister Paula (yes, the hostess of Thanksgiving 2002) were next to join; it was Paula who commissioned the creation of the official coffee mug. Paula’s husband Marc, her mother (and my sister) Nancy, and Nancy’s husband Paul soon became regulars. My son Matthew and my brother John were initiated when they came up from DC. The breakfasts were a riot of laughing, joking, and storytelling, with Dad beaming exultantly at the warmth and humor of it all. He once clinked his mug for attention to announce, “ I don’t like these breakfasts. I love them.” And “luh-luh-love” is not a word that an Irishman throws around loosely.

Conspicuous by her absence from these proceedings was my mother, The Grammy. She never rose before ten-thirty or eleven on Sunday, and seldomfinished her breakfast of tea and toast before noon. At first she looked askance at the whole idea of family members meeting up at the ungodly hour of 8:00 A.M., but as the ritual grew, she began to feel left out. Her proposal to change the meeting time from 8:00 to 11:00 was soundly defeated in a secret ballot, as was her caveat that the club should meet only in restaurants with smoking areas (she was the only smoker in the family).

Nevertheless, Dad did show up one morning with a sleepily agitated wife in tow. The Grammy wanted to see what all the excitement was about, but she was soundly disappointed. The food was too heavy, the service too slow, the ambiance was too ordinary. Worse still, she had to go outside to smoke, and--incredibly--she was not the center of attention. Once was enough. The Happy and Shiny Sunday Morning Traveling Breakfast Club would have to survive without her presence

The Grammy brought up the club at one of my recent visits to the aptly-named Queen Anne Nursing Home. Her recollections are somewhat addled by her illness, and so, as usual, I had two responses to each of her assertions--what I said, and what I thought.

“Remember that breakfast club I started?” she asked. “Were you ever a member?”

I said, “Yeah, that was a lot of fun. Of course I was a member.”

I thought, “You started? We managed to keep it a secret from you for two years.”

“I couldn’t remember if I let you in,” she continued. “I wanted to have no liberals.”

I said, “C’mon, Mum. You know in our family, we accept each others politics.”

I thought, “And I wanted to have no smokers."

“You all said we’d go to restaurants,” she added, “but we usually ended up eating at my house.”

I said, “Yeah, those were some great breakfasts you cooked.”

I thought,“Huh? You haven’t fried an egg in 20 years.”

My mother’s version of events notwithstanding, the breakfast club was a tonic for my father during his last years of life. The happiness these simple gatherings brought him was palpable. We all understood how deeply Dad appreciated these times, and so when it came time toprovide information for his death notice, we all agreed. Right along with World War II veteran and Deputy Fire Chief, the notice announced that Dad had been a founding member of The Happy and Shiny Sunday Morning Traveling Breakfast Club.