Brightwood Tavern
Last night we opened a door we’ve always been a little afraid to open. We watched as they remodeled the old Brightwood Tavern, in Brightwood on Mount Hood. It used to be a rather dumpy place. So dumpy, we’d never garnered the courage to actually open the door and walk in. Recently, one of the former owners repurchased the place and fixed it up.
We’ve driven by a few times in the past but were afraid to stop in. Courage used to be harder to find than it is right now. The less we have to anchor us in life the more willing we are to take a chance. Living carefully seems so unnatural these days. Protecting ourselves feels like a big waste of time. So, we went in.
As we walked through the door, the crowd looked up to see the two strangers. No one seemed to care that we were from somewhere else. The room looked like my high school reunion, if it were taking place in 1977. The guys still have long hair and wear tee shirts with rock band logo’s that used to be on posters in my bedroom. There are flirty girls who play the game and play the guy at the other end of the pool stick.
On the Juke Box (they still have a Juke Box) Jim Croce lives on. I wonder if they know Jim died in a plane crash in the 70’s. The place was clean, new carpet looks great and the interior is like sitting in an old log cabin, because that’s what it is. Built a hundred years ago. The bar stools are actual logs with a thick red upholstered pad on the top.
The crowd was loud and pretty drunk. A week ago, it might have bothered us but tonight the noises drowned out thoughts and feelings that ebb and flow like the tide going in and out at the beach.
People were being good. I think the sign warning folks that this is the owners living room “we don’t fight in yours, don’t fight in ours.”
I felt a home in this strange place. Perhaps it was the Ninkasi Brew on tap or maybe it felt like the early years when Kathy and I were first married and moved to Coos Bay. When we left Portland for Coos Bay we felt all alone. Yeh, alone is filled with sad moments but alone also has a quiet peace about it.
When we’re alone we tend to learn more. When we’re alone we tend to look at the most important people in our lives with more desperation and dependency. When we’re alone, we quickly discover we really aren’t alone it just feels that way sometimes.
Saturday night, my sister-in-law (Susan) and her husband (Les) came up to the mountain to help us fix some stuff at the house. We needed to see them. We’ve been through a lot of hard times with the Rickett’s by our side. We jumped in their “Caddy” and drove to the Brightwood Tavern. We parked the car next to all the pickups and spent the evening doing what we do best, laughing a lot.
We played Peter Frampton, Pat Benatar, Pink Floyde and Steve Miller Band on the Juke Box. We drank beer (Ninkasi), ate pizza and lived life to the extreme. I handed out a few business cards to some guys I met in the restroom. (I’m not afraid to talk business in the bathroom) We gave our waiter a bad time and watched the night disappear. Sitting there in that booth at the Brightwood I experienced something I haven’t tasted since the biopsy was taken a few weeks ago…..Peace.
When things are tough, God gives us the ability to skip the formalities and just tell people we love them. When we see a period at the end of the sentence describing our life, we don’t care if it’s a run on sentence, we’ll cram as many words onto the page as we can, to heck with proper sentence structure.
So, today I will pick up my “Surviving Prostate Cancer Novel” and read the next chapter. I will read my way into a world I wish I didn’t have to enter. But in a way it’s like opening the door to the Brightwood. We don’t always know what’s on the other side until we enter. If this is my destiny, what am I waiting for? My future is not here anymore it’s on the other side of that door, turning that page, walking into a place that will change my life forever.
