I woke up 40 minutes before my alarm went off and for the most part just laid there in the dark thinking about getting up, but also just thinking my alarm was a moment away. As it turns out, it wasn’t. After 20 minutes, I couldn’t take it anymore and headed out to the breakfast buffet.
The scene is about as insane as I could hope for. It started calmly enough, but after the last 30 minutes, nearly every table is in use, and there are little kids sprinting from table to table, and parents looking worn, even though it’s the first hour of their day.
Surreal would be a good word for this.
Kids crying. Kids wild eyed. Parents still wiping the sleep from their eyes. Orange juice spilling across tables, and of course the news is running full steam ahead on flat screen TVs mounted to the wall. We’re at the happiest place on earth and Lohan is rejecting a plea deal in the background!? Mostly I’m shocked at the contrast of it all.
Enough with introductions. Really I wanted to take a moment to note my evening. We made it into LAX, got our vibrant orange rocket (a dodge grand caravan, complete with automatic side doors and satellite radio), and eventually made it to our hotel. A bit small for our crew, but for what it is, it’s nice.
We headed out to dinner at Mimi’s Cafe, and, in no uncertain terms (read: sternly, after a day of travel and being hungry) ordered dinner. It came, we scarfed.
While the 7 of us sat, we chatted. Amy (Nick’s girlfriend), fired question after question to my mother. Great questions. Pertinent questions. Questions I had never thought to ask after all these years.
What kind of music did he listen to?
Did he have a good vocabulary?
Of course these led to others, and the conversation carried until our food arrived. It was fun to see Amy gather information and I just sat and soaked it in.
Of course I’m excited to learn more. Of course I’ve had questions over the years. Of course I’ve asked countless questions. But this foray into the machine-gun approach of information gathering was great! Rather than “what was he like”, she got into great detail by asking other things like “beyond women and alcohol, what did he spend his money on?” Very focused, very easy to answer.
Today we’ll be delving into more family. More questions. More information.
I just hope & pray that I can maintain a spongelike approach to all of this. It’s a crash course in me, my father, my family.
I’m headed back to the room now to rouse the crowd if they’re not already up and get ready to roll out to our next rendezvous. Rest assured I’ll be thinking of what questions I really want to know the answers to.