Smoke

That place had everything. A woman took your coats and hung them up for you. In their place she gave you a brass coin with a number so you could claim them when you returned to your ordinary life in the outside world. While waiting for our dining table we’d sit in huge overstuffed velvet chairs near that fountain and pool and listen to a man play the grand piano, as we were served by a real grown man dressed in a fancy suit. He’d bring my parents adult drinks while my sister and I would get a coke with two cherries stuck on a toothpick with a little umbrella on top.

Sitting, waiting for our dining table Dad would drink his whiskey sour, Mom her scotch and soda and they’d smoke while greeting and talking to others they knew. My sister and I would sit quietly while sipping our coke watching, as my parents caught up on the latest gossip around town.

At the appointed hour a man dressed in coat and tails would quietly approach and say, “Doctor? Your table is ready.” Mom and Dad would thank him, extinguish their cigarettes, take the last sip of their drinks and then we’d be lead by the maitre’d to our table in the fine dining room. Oh what a room it was!

The first things you noticed in that large, partially lit room were the small lamps with off white shades on dark wooden pillars, which divided it to smaller private squares; a man playing the piano with a violinist accompanying provided a quiet tune to spur the appetite. The china and silver were the finest, the tablecloths were linen and the chairs were over stuffed, so you could comfortably sit for hours and not developed a sore behind. The menu was printed on large, fancy paper with tassels and when the waiter, who was dressed in a suit, approached he’d address me as, “the Young Gentleman or Master.” I’d order another Coca Cola with those cherry decorations and then my dinner, all by myself even though I was only nine and my Sunday suit didn’t fit quite right.

Mom ordered liver and onions, my sister fish and I’d have something Italian, because my father was a meat and potatoes man. We never had those other dishes at home except for fish on Friday’s, which wasn’t very good, because it was consider more a Catholic obligation than something good to eat. Today, almost fifty years later I love fish and Italian isn’t bad either, but I seldom have meat and potatoes.

After dinner my sister and I would sit like two overfed dogs just waiting to collapse in some comfortable spot while my parents drank their coffee and smoked their cigarettes. Mom smoked in the restaurant because her husband was at her table, so she wouldn’t be considered a loose woman. It was then, when I was nine, during the winter, in the Pontiac hotel dining room, after Sunday dinner that it happened. Mom’s cigarette lighter was out of fluid. She clicked and clicked, shook it, even banged it on the table but it wouldn’t light and my Father was too far away so, he couldn’t take his trusty zippo lighter out to reach over and light her smoke. Since I was next to him and next to her at the square table in the fancy dimly lit dining room he handed me his lighter and said, “John, light your Mother’s cigarette.”

Now, I had used his lighter before but never for this! I used it to burn leaves in the fall, or to start the wood stove in his workshop, but I’d never lit some ones smoke, after all I was only nine. It was with a deep gulp and shaking hands I took hold of that huge silver lighter, which was always warm from being in his pant’s pocket. Flipping back the top with that loud click I spun the flint circle thing once and produced the large blue and orange flame, which if used wisely could burn down a house. I was so scared! What if I burned her face or worse yet what if I set her hair on fire?

See, Mom wore so much make up and hair spray that if she ever got near a zippo lighter with it’s huge flame. I thought she’d instantly erupt in flames and I’d be forever more known as the son who burned his mother down. At the very least I’d be know as the idiot who set her hair ablaze and watched as his poor mother ran screaming out of the Pontiac Dining room with her hair on fire.

So with shaking hands I reached out with that deadly zippo lighter in full flame as everyone in my family held their breath except Mom, because she needed a smoke after dinner. But, to play it safe, I didn’t hold the lighter too close, so she had to lean slightly down to get her Kent cigarette going. It was then, in that little moment, through my nervousness and in the light of the zippo lighter she ceased to be my mother but a woman. And what a woman she was!

Her eyes shone like diamonds, between her slender fingers, nails painted red, a Kent cigarette. Hair perfectly coiffed, her thin short nose etched in the orange light of after dinner drinks and coffee. A pearl necklace accented her white neck, a semi-low cut dress proving the warmth and softness of her breast. Little wonder my Father loved her, she was a movie star, a beauty queen, a princess, she was my Mother. It was right then in the warm light of the dinning room I ceased to be her son. I was Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, James Bond and a man about town. I was savvy, sophisticated and in His Majesty’s secret service. I wasn’t some nine-year-old kid in an ill-fitting suit who’d just lit his Mom’s smoke.

As her lungs exhaled the cigarette smoke, without being set on fire by her loving son she softly said, “Thank you, John.

And I said, “You’re welcome.”

Then I handed the now closed and safe lighter to my Father and said, “Here Dad.”

Sometimes important moments in one’s life go unnoticed without any meaningful words, especially when you’re nine and with your family. I had no idea how lighting that first cigarette would affect my life.

Since I lit that smoke almost fifty years ago I’ve lit enough cigarettes to stretch from here to the moon. I lit a smoke after my first sexual experience, the day I was married and when loved ones were laid to rest. All my life I’ve lit cigarettes and now on this Christmas Eve standing on the bluff over looking the lake, because of Doctor’s orders I’d light little more.

How does one give up something that has been such an integral part of his life? How do you walk away? How do you bury those memories surrounded in smoke?

“Remember the smoke”, rang through my head. “Let the smoke drift to heaven with a small prayer besieging the Creator to give me the wisdom never to forget and the power to quit.”

THE END