An essay I (re)write every five years: about a diner, a waitress, and a city far-gone.
Magnolia was nearly always the final destination—a place to close out the night, whether long or brief, where we could linger until every conversation had run its course. A place to celebrate: advancement in a years-awaited tryst, my acceptance into college thousands of miles away, my high school graduation. A place to grieve: the collapse of a years-awaited tryst, my final departure from my life with my parents and friends of many years and to said college, and the seemingly common but dramatic dissolutions of the friendships built throughout high school and childhood at large. Part of what made this diner so unique was that my experiences there were not. It was the destination, oasis, and secondary home of so many with such soul-consuming but transient problems as mine. It transcended the strata of the city. Age, education, occupation, origin, social status—none of it truly permeated beyond the bounds of that parking lot. Everyone retained their traits and stereotypes, but the hierarchies associated ceased to have any importance when we were all there for the same reason; we were all insomniacs at the diner.
