My Best Restaurant Experience of 2009 wasn’t technically in 2009. I’ll explain.

My son (nearing five) loves stories. The personal kind. Those evenings capped by Seuss and Potter readings just don’t cut it with him anymore (though he likes them as appetizers). He wants to hear about how his grandpa falls asleep with a book spread open on his face. Or the time his mom flew across the stage in her black swan suit, feathers flying. He keeps asking for stories, and we keep opening the vaults, dusting off the archives, serving up night-cap stories. Recently, I told him this one.

There is a river in Alaska, big, broad, like a flattened snake. It winds, curves, slithers across the flat, tree-less tundra. Perched on a bluff overlooking the river is a small, unassuming town, reachable only by boat or plane. Every year, the river chips away at the town, bit by bit, pulling it into its swells. Streets disappear. Homes are swallowed.

One chilly autumn day, almost a quarter century ago, my mom, dad, sister and I packed into our truck, stomachs grumbling. We drove to the edge of the bluff, parked, and walked across the crisp ground, toward a red double-decker bus. We climbed up the steep stairs and into the center aisle, greeted by a warm and greasy blast of air, a smile from the cook. Up we climbed, spiraling up a tight staircase. We chose a booth, toward the back. I was excited. I was delirious.

I looked out the window, across the illuminated river that stretched toward an unseen sea, to that point where the earth leans up, nudges the darkening sky. The moment was serene, but I remember an edginess as well, the possibility that our restaurant might slide into the river, quietly and without a fight. My adolescent hormones delighted in this. Beauty, danger, and moments later, a steaming basket of fish and chips, and a plastic cup brimming with rootbeer to wash it all down.

By the time I finished telling this story, my son’s eyes were huge, bright, sparkling in the glow of his salt lamp. “Is that a real story?” he asked. “Is it true?”

I love drawing a connecting line between the boy I was, and the boy he is. Time collapses. My heart? Unabashedly larger. His joy meets my joy, present embraces past. His thirst – for real stories, true stories, the ones that feed him most deeply and carry him into the darkness beyond the edge of his pillow – his thirst reveals the deep fulfillment brought forth from the human story, the tale of our shared adventure. Decades after the original event, there we were, my son and I, sharing a booth in that bus, marveling at the view.

(Different mini-sketch created for each day/post. Click for larger view.)

What is this? Read more about the Best of 2009.