I’m neither that person in a shimmering gown at a semi-formal wedding, nor the one in jeans and a tee shirt at a conference. I try to dress appropriately. In fact, one of the pluses of working in catering is the wardrobe. For events, black pants and company chef coat. For kitchen work, jeans or shorts and a chef coat. Non-slip clogs and a bandana with both. And never a second thought.
When I’m going to a restaurant I know nothing about, I find their website and look at pictures of the dining room. I don’t really care about the dining room. All those people sitting at tables are wearing something, and that tells me what I need to know.
Except it didn’t work. The pictures from the place my husband would be playing showed the room. No people. It looked nice. White tablecloths, pink roses. So I packed a beautifully printed pair of harem pants, a black crepe sleeveless top, even thought about heels, but settled on flats. Put on make-up. Jewelry. And walked into a place where people in shorts and polo shirts were eating burgers at wood tables.
Not all of them. There were appetizers. Bar drinks, and a few people had clearly changed for dinner. But still, quite casual, except for me. So I owned it.
We started out in the “green room” which was really a screened porch with tables and benches. While the musicians talked and met each other, I looked outside. The back side of the room faced a steep wooded slope. I began scoping out how you would climb down from there. Way too steep, almost a 90˚ grade.
Then I found it. If the two hikers who never left my mind swung right, they could work their way down around the steepest part. We would be clinging from one tree to the next, but we could do it. I knew what the soft ground would feel like on our boots, what the damp woods smelled like, how the bark felt against our leaning hands.
A coworker friend who had been watching Grace and Frankie on Netflix once told me I reminded her of Frankie, all that wild hair and making art. Tonight, I was Grace. I sat alone at a front table sipping Pinot Grigio while my husband played. A well-dressed woman approached me wanting to know if he had CDs for sale. We went to the green room where I found them, and helped her select one. We talked, and she gave me her card, She was a manager with a company that stocked juke boxes. And for tonight, I was not an artist hippie chick. I think it made me approachable. I sold two more CDs to a couple who had lost their music collection and everything else in the Gatlinburg fire. We hugged each other.
When he finished playing, I ordered the most expensive trout on the menu, not because of the price, but because it sounded good. I ended up talking about outdoor lights with the girlfriend of another musician. I met a woman who runs a songwriter festival, and we had a sort of personal alcohol fueled conversation. More hugs. I was an insider, having fun.
Gatlinburg didn’t suck. I wished I could tell way-back-when me.
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