I was hoping for the best but preparing for the worst as Brendan and I walked inside the restaurant, with him holding my hand, trailing slightly behind.
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As it turned out, I had nothing to be worried about. Gretchen was already seated at the bar by the time we arrived, and while her eyes widened in surprise when she first saw the two of us enter, they became slightly misty once I apologized and explained the whole situation to her. After a quiet moment or two passed, she told me she completely understood and knelt down to say hello to Brendan with a big, warm smile.
Our waiter, on the other hand, was visibly nonplussed. His reaction was understandable — the Astral Plane was well-known at the time as one of Philly’s more eclectic and intimate restaurants.
The soft candlelight illuminating the rococo furnishings and white silk parachute draped across the entire ceiling exuded a single, unmistakable mood: romance. It was decidedly not the sort of place where chicken nuggets had ever been featured on the prix fixe menu.
In fact, it was not the sort of place that had envisioned booster chairs as part of its seating plan, either. Two thick Philadelphia Yellow Pages stacked atop one another on Brendan’s Queen Anne chair did the trick.
Gretchen was wonderful and took everything completely in stride, and made a point to say how handsome Brendan looked in his fancy suit. I appreciated her effort and graciously refrained from pointing out there had not been much choice for a suitable alternative, as all the remaining clothing in my son’s wardrobe prominently displayed either Barney, Elmo, or permanent juice stains.
I have to say Brendan was on his best behavior that night. He could be a pretty finicky eater back at that age, so while I may have been pointing to the ‘Linguine with Sun-Dried Tomatoes’ in the menu as I placed his order with the waiter, I made sure to refer to it out loud as just plain old “spaghetti.”
Brendan’s table manners were even better than I could have hoped for. True — he did begin to build a little castle out of the sugar cubes he discovered inside the sterling bowl at the center of the table, but I decided to let it slide because at least that activity held zero danger of anything breaking, spilling, or staining, which in my book I considered a win-win-win. The fact that I had to drink my coffee black that night was a small price to pay for keeping him quietly occupied and the fancy tablecloth unblemished.
