"Let's Go Back to the Diner" North Kingstown, RI

This is Day 7 of the mother/daughter collaboration. What I hadn't told you was that for the first 6 days, my mom was completely depressed and not really wanting to continue living. Tonight, I called and she was, "Happy Patty," as my Dad calls her. I'm sharing this now because my Mom asked me to document how she was depressed and now she is "up." I'm not exactly sure when it started, but for at least 4 years, my Mom has had to deal with cyclical depression. Almost like clock work, her disease has her depressed for 2 weeks and then up for 2. It's something we still haven't gotten used too.

Tonight when I mentioned her needing to give me my topic of inspiration, she said happily, "Hmmm, a topic?" She thought about her first dog, Sandy, and then excitedly said, "Let's go back to the diner days." This is when she was a teenager and my Aunt Lou and my Grandparents had restaurants on the same street in North Kingstown, RI. "Your Aunt Lou's Restaurant was a gold mine, and your Grandmother closed her's down after a year, because she didn't want to compete with her sister."

I used to dance as a kid in my Aunt Lou's Restaurant (The Dutch Door), and customers would buy me gifts. My Aunty Lou would take me to the beach to fly kites and to Goddard Park to ride ponies and leave my Mom and Non working. It was awesome.

I have no memories of my Grandparent's diner. All I know is that it was called the "Kingstown Diner," (thank you again google image search, this may be the actual diner) and my grandpa was the chef, he had an oyster bar and clam cakes and chowder for the beach goers, and from what he says, a bunch of house wives would drop off their empty pots in the morning to be filled by him with dinner for the night. That way their husbands would think they had been cooking all day. He loves telling that story. Based on this diner website, diners were actually invented in RI, to feed blue collars working the night shift.

I told my mom about the movie "Julie and Julia," she's up beat enough to want to get out of the house and see a movie. She said, "we should do a blog, then they could do a movie about us, you in Texas and me in RI." I said, "We are doing a blog." "That's great." she said.

Tonight, she was so loud with excitement on the phone that at one point after she said another, "That's a great idea." my Dad's ears perked up and I heard him say in the background, "What's a great idea? All great ideas go through me. " Those care givers are too funny.