Impatient, ungrateful, critical. And happy.

An epic account of a very ordinary evening.


On Wednesday we went to the taco dinner put on by the Catholic students of “Mission Mexico.” They’ll be spending Spring break at an orphanage in Tijuana, and this is one of their major fundraisers. For us it’s a cheap dinner and a chance to socialize a little, as well as a good cause. Dante enjoys it, and so do Lola and I.

The dinner was held downtown, in the basement of St. Aelred's Episcopal. We had arranged that I would walk there from work and Dante and Lola would meet me. They arrived first, as I had hoped they would. Dante spotted me through the glass door, yelled “Dad!” and ran to hug me, and of course my heart melted. While he was still squeezing my neck, however, I looked up to see Lola counting her money. “Do you have any cash at all?” she asked weakly. Immediately I felt a wash of anger short-circuit the moment's tenderness. “Uh, no,” I shot back, shaking my head. Yet again, I was thinking, she has not thought things out. As though I never make a mistake. She continued, miserably, to recount a stack of wrinkled bills.

We were three dollars short. Lola timidly approached the ticket table, me looming behind her. Dante was oblivious, darting and jiving in the long hallway, running his fingers along the wall. The girl taking money was oblivious too. “Do children get in free?” Lola asked her, cringing slightly. The girl rolled her eyes, waived us in. “Go ahead,” she said wearily. Whatever. Uh…no sanks, as Dante would say. It was a fundraiser, after all. “I’ll go out and look in the car,” Lola said. “Wait here.”

Dante was getting tired of waiting. I was fit to be tied. “Let’s go. Help mom,” I snapped after a couple of minutes, but he didn’t want to go. I had to cajole him. Out in front of the church, Lola was rifling the van, all the usual places: the ashtray, the overheads, the undersides of the sun visors. Nothing. I could feel my face curdle into a sneer. “We’ll have to go to the bank,” Lola said, straining. “Hop in, Dante.”

I brooded all the way to the ATM and back. Tried half-heartedly to cut through the mood with a prayer for forbearance, it being Lent, but I was enjoying my righteous anger too much—even though I knew that to hold it much longer was risking a backlash. I held my tongue, but sighed exasperation when I had to step out into traffic in front of the bank. Lola was not responding.

Finally we were back at the church, paying our money, standing in line. The line was long. The room was crowded with students eating. The girls began to notice Dante, to point, to smile. Soon he noticed them. With only a little encouragement from Lola, he launched into an enthusiastic demonstration of the Chicken Dance, which he had learned earlier in the day at his pre-school afternoon enrichment class. More pointing. More smiles. Laughter. I folded my arms, forced a smile. The boil had been lanced, and the anger was draining. Lola apologized for not bringing enough money. “It’s okay,” I said quietly. Then, “Geez, this line is moving slowly.” She rolled her eyes.

When at last we sat down with our plates I quickly polished mine off, and soon felt a stitch from the fat and the additives. It was all canned stuff, and not even Goya. Mountains of stiff orange machine-shredded cheese, a white plastic bucket of imitation sour cream. Hard corn shells packed in cellophane that crumble at the first bite, leaving you with a handful of shards and greasy meat. Naturally I went back for seconds.

When I got back to the table Fr. Gary was visiting, talking to Lola about Dante, trying to talk to Dante. “How’s your dinner?” he asked. “Good,” Dante said. “How old is he now?” he asked Lola. He does this every time he sees us. Our conversations have never gone farther, and although he knows our faces, it’s clear that Fr. Gary doesn’t know our names. For some reason, though, (maybe it was the kitchen work that awaited him), he was in an expansive mood. He talked on about the Mission, the orphanage, the ragged little boys he sees again every year, the way they paw at his pockets for the bubble gum he keeps there for them, the time two of them doused him with a bucket of water. He was sitting right next to me, and I couldn’t help but focus on the thick tufts of hair protruding from his nose, the way he had just scarfed a taco while standing over the garbage can, the stories I’d heard of his laziness.

At last he got up to leave. “Have to go wash the dishes,” he said, mock incredulous. Soon Lola was done eating, and after a while Dante was done too. The room had almost cleared out. We got up, lingered briefly over the photo displays from previous Mission trips—they all included a group shot from an “R&R dinner” at some cantina in Rosarita—and talked to a few students about the clothing Lola had gathered to donate. She gave two of them hugs as we left; they thanked us for coming. I squatted to tie Dante’s shoe. He quickly rounded on me, a favorite move, and jumped on my back, arms round my neck. “A ride, a ride,” he chanted. I stood, slowly, and hoisted him up. We walked down the long hallway and out into the evening.