Waffle House

So it's been a while, and trust me readers its with good reason & soon I will tell you about my HUGE birthday present that has taken all my blogging time, but for now I hope this is some JWT filler.
What I love about blogs is that every now and then you get to connect and share something really personal. Along the way, I can't imagine how that does not unfold, the sharing of secrets and the entree to the blogger's life outside of their topic. I thought I would share why my end date will be Dec. 25, 2010, a few days shy of a full calendar year since I was kinda sparse this week on the postings.
I like traditions, and growing up in a family that changed it's compositions almost every other year, I can not say that I have any long standing family traditions. My immediate family tree would look like a spider's nest. The hubs was kind enough to let me go crazy attempting to create and instill holiday traditions and such, but our family composition moved around a bit too. This last holiday season was the first that was only hubs, kid & I that we have ever had. With that kinda of movement, you adjust and make little changes, and some of those traditions endure the brunt of it.
The only constant thing that I can say has happened in my life each year since I was 12 years old was that I had Xmas dinner at Waffle House. Don't judge, Waffle House is a magical place. There solely to meet your needs during times when no one else is there for you, like holidays and 4am hungerstrikes. My mom was a nurse, and she genuinely liked working the holiday shifts, but that meant that our dinner for Xmas was going to be Waffle House. Luckily, I was a little punk kid that thought it was at first a testament to the anti-establishment of the commercial holiday season, that later it was a smooth transition into the time I just genuinely grew to enjoy having this little tradition with my mom.
One year, I noticed that on the holiday menu that the painted Santa holding the specials actually had 6 fingers (this is a national menu), and my Mom and I got a free Xmas dinner that year. It is one of the truly golden memories I have of us.
I know some people don't get it, or that it's met with a guffaw or confused look. It is hard to explain just what it means to me, like the excitement when I know we are driving over is something comparable to those kids in the Disney commercials. People have shared our Waffle House Xmas dinners with us and I puff up like a proud momma (BTW, my mother would not let me use that word, it is simply to best describe my WH pride). There are great things about Waffle House to behold and credit.
They have their own language. I get the chicken sandwich, no hash, no garden (that means no veggies on my sandwich). And I know you all have your own way to order the hash browns. For those of you that are not familiar with Waffle House's hash brown breakdown, this is what you order; "scattered" (spread on the grill), "smothered" (with onions), "covered" (with cheese), "chunked" (with diced ham), "diced" (with diced tomatoes), "peppered" (with jalapeño peppers), "capped" (with mushrooms), "topped" (with chili) and "all the way" (with all available toppings). Recently, the option of "country" had been added for hash browns with sausage gravy on them.
The people are colorful and friendly, especially on Xmas, when I imagine they would rather not be there and have to be because of people like me and the medical community everywhere. And we appreciate it! One year, my mom and I brought little wrapped gifts when we went because she did not have to work that year and I think she felt it was somehow less permissible to go if you did not have a reason. Anyway, I think it tickled the waitstaff, and so one of the ladies went behind the jukebox, flipped some switch and we played free music on the WH jukebox the rest of the evening. Speaking of jukeboxes, Waffle House has probably over 20 songs that are just songs about the Waffle House on each jukebox, I think that is incredible. One of them is by Elvis.
I think it is also one thing for this to my a mom and me thing, and then for it to evolve into my hubs' and kid's life, and that they seem to get excited about it too. Or that after my mom passed, that it was still embraced as "our" family tradition. Two years ago, we were lucky enough to have two people stay with us for the holidays and when we went to WH, the Liberian Lovely surprised us with Crackers. We spent the rest of the dinner wearing colorful paper crowns on our heads while we ate, and I snapped a picture and it is one of my favorite family photos.
Families change, people come in and out of our lives. Words like "family, friends, tradition, and home" become skewed and modified, and while that is something I celebrate in my life, it can leave one without a sense of foundation. Where is that one constant to hold onto & remind you who you are? I don't care how odd it sounds, on Xmas day, Waffle House will always feel like home for me.

This is why I will be eating out on 12/25/10 at a Waffle House near you.