Ithacans treat a good restaurant, in this case Mexican, the way New Yorkers treat Governor’s Island on a gorgeous summer weekend: happy to go themselves, proud to show it off. Ithacans also eat early. Our quartet -- lazy day behind us featuring a 3-mile walk from our cabin to a wetlands/bird sanctuary (watching a great blue heron, its feet lifting, its wings unfolding, is a window into pre-human time) and a narrowly-avoided thunderstorm viewed from the cabin porch and two naps (for the adults) and two writing sessions (for the 9-year-old) and a very late lunch -- must wait 20 minutes for a table at 6 p.m. on a Monday night. My sister (the Aunt) and mother (the Grandma) stroll on the commons while my daughter (the Kid) and I (the Dad) play tag. Back on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant:
Dad (nodding at restaurant across the street): We’re missing a chance to get oysters.
Grandma: Do you like oysters?
Dad: I do. I mean, I won’t knock over small children to get them, but, yeah.
Aunt: What food would you knock over small children to eat?
Dad: Hmmmm. Maybe a caramel sundae?
Kid: You’d knock over small children to eat a caramel sundae?
Dad: Only if it were the last one.
Kid: You’re terrible.
Dad: Why should they get it?
Kid: I would push you into the street to stop you.
Aunt: That’s more serious. He could get hit by a car.
Kid: He’s trampling children!
Dad: Yeah, but they’re only going to get a little bruised. And kids heal fast.
Kid: Knocking you into the street is not worse.
Dad: Despite the risk of my serious injury, or even death.
Kid: Yes.
Dad: You feel the punishment is commensurate.
Kid: Commensurate.
Dad: Roughly equal.
Kid: I do.
Dad: That seems harsh.
Kid: You’re terrible.
Families come to this Mexican joint. A sobbing 4-year-old boy exits in the arms of a sympathetic, obdurate grandfather, fat tears rolling down the boy’s fat cheeks; his 3-year-old butterfly-barretted sister trails, chipper, hand-holding her mother who stops to chat to a table dining al fresco, the girl charming, twirling, blowing kisses. We can hear her brother’s wails from a half-block away. I’m certain the sister has outraged his sense of justice. I hate her.
Our quartet is seated next to a vacated table above a floor littered with crayons and lettuce and chips and tomatoes and tortillas.
Grandma: I’ll bet that was that little boy’s table.
Aunt: No, Mom. We just saw that table walking out. Those two kids with the gorgeous parents.
Kid: Those kids looked happy.
Dad: Not only bad kids make messes, Mom.
Grandma: I didn’t say the boy was bad! You know how I feel about people calling quiet babies “good babies!” As if all other babies were somehow not.
Dad: Yes, Mom. We all know how you feel about that.
Grandma: Well, it makes me angry.
Two summers ago, 7-year-old Kid ate nothing at this restaurant but plain chips; now she orders a quesadilla and chips and guacamole: progress. Our house margaritas arrive. I run my finger on the outside of the glass, offer it to the child.
Kid: [shakes head]
Dad: It’s pure salt. Do you know how they prepare a margarita?
Kid: [shakes head]
Dad: Before any liquid, before any ice cube, touches the glass, they turn it over and rub the rim in salt, with this twisty motion. Look at these fat grains. [To Grandma] The Kid would knock down small children to eat a fingerful of salt.
Kid: I would not!
Dad: But this salt comes from a glass that contains alcohol. Even though it’s from the outside rim and itself has never touched alcohol.
Grandma: You don’t like alcohol?
Kid: No!
Dad: The Kid will not carry from the table to the kitchen any glass that has been drained of all alcoholic contents, since it once contained alcohol.
Kid: That’s because waiters who are under 21 cannot serve alcohol in restaurants. They can’t carry the glasses.
Aunt: They can carry empty glasses. And that’s only in a public business with a license to serve alcohol. Parents can serve children alcohol in their homes.
Kid: Children cannot drink alcohol.
Aunt: Sure they can. In a private residence.
Kid: Not children!
Aunt [lists all the arguments the Kid’s parents have marshaled on multiple previous occasions, summing up with]: Besides, who’s going to stop them?
Dad [cupping hands before mouth]: Sir, ma’am, come out with your hands up! Put the wine glasses down! Hands where we can see them!
Kid: Dad!
Dad: We certainly carried our share growing up. Wine glasses. Beer steins. Gin-and-tonic glasses. Whiskey tumblers. Full. Empty.
Grandma: I just wanted the dishes done.
Dad: And you wanted a drink.
Grandma: Did you kids ever sneak drinks?
Aunt and Dad: Never.
Aunt: I don’t think any of us liked the taste.
Dad: You know who used to like the taste? This one.
Kid: Dad!
Dad: When you were about 2, for about a year. You wanted anything we were drinking. Beer. Wine. Whiskey. We had to put limits on it. One sip per parent.
Kid: You should have been arrested.
Dad: And deprived you of your loving parents?
Kid: Yes.
Dad: You weren’t always such a purist.
The food arrives: chicken enchiladas with green sauce for Aunt, chorizo enchiladas with green sauce for Dad, chicken taco salad for Grandma. The Kid has eaten four-fifths of the guac and wolfs her quesadilla.
Kid: What flavor could you live without? Salt, sweet, sour, bitter.
Grandma: I guess bitter.
Aunt: You could live without coffee? Dark chocolate?
Grandma: Well, chocolate yes. Not coffee. [Pause] This is a hard question.
Dad: Maybe salt. The foods I’m not thrilled about are things like olives, pickles. I could live never eating another brined thing. I don’t like aggressive salting.
Aunt: But no salt? You’d hate it. Everything would be bland.
Dad [to the Kid]: What about you? You hate spicy.
Kid: That’s not one of the basic four.
Dad: Shouldn’t it be a basic five?
Kid: It’s not. I hate sour. You know those Sour Patch candies? I hate those.
Dad: But that’s sour on steroids. A little sour? A squeeze of lime juice?
Kid: I hate it.
Aunt: I can’t do it. I won’t reject a basic flavor.
Kid: But if you had to.
Aunt: I refuse. Getting rid of one would throw everything off.
Dad: What’s that one flavor that comes from the perfect balance of the other four?
Kid: Umami!
Dad: I thought that was a kind of sushi. Eel.
Aunt: That’s unagi.
Dad: Those Japanese have a different word for everything.
Kid: Dad.
Grandma: I notice none of us has said anything about eliminating sweet.
Dad: That’s because we’re not insane. [to Aunt] Have we remembered the name of that ice cream place?
Aunt: Let me text Randy C.
Dad: Randy C. knows Ithaca?
Aunt: Randy C. knows restaurants in every city in the world.
Kid: The whole world? Africa? China? Idaho?
Aunt: I was being hyperbolic. But he knows a lot. We were in Paris and he sent a list of places we should try; a few of them overlapped our list, and we tried a couple of others and they were amazing. He and his wife both love to travel and they both love to eat.
Grandma: A life well lived.
Dad: Did he go to Cornell? Ithaca seems obscure.
Aunt: He did. Here it is! [turns phone to show picture of the Purity Ice Cream sign]
Dad: God bless Randy C.
Aunt: [Reading] We’re supposed to order black raspberry with chocolate sprinkles.
Kid: I hate sprinkles.
Dad: Oh, I know.
Kid: Eating sprinkles is like eating bits of road tar.
Dad: You do not have to order sprinkles.
Kid: Do I have to order black raspberry?
Dad: You can order anything you like.
Kid: Do they have mint chip?
Dad: I am shocked that you want to order mint chip.
Kid: Dad.
Grandma: Your grandpa loved mint chip, too.
Dad: You’re a chip off the old block.
Kid: Dad. Do they have it?
Dad: I would be shocked if they don’t. But there’s only one way to find out.
[All exit]
