Saturday, I went home to Baltimore to celebrate my Mom’s birthday and to take her out to dinner. My parents, my brother, and I went to Linwood’s, an expensive, yet amazing restaurant. It’s more of a food-as-art type of place, yet the food is always delicious, and you leave with the understanding that your next steak at your next restaurant will never be as good.

Anyway, we chipped in and bought my mom some diamond earrings. We have a long-standing tradition of buying each other multiple cards. I’m not quite sure how or when it first started, but we do it for everything: birthdays, anniversaries, graduations. Usually one card is more serious and one is funny. This year, I got her two funny cards.

The first one said something to the extent that the card was from your favorite child, into which I signed my brother’s name, and then crossed it out and wrote my name in crayon. It went over big. The second card, coincidentally, was the exact same card my brother gave her. We’re freaky like that. Out of all the cards in two different stores, in two different states, we chose the same one. And he’d been eyeing the other one, too. Go figure.

Anyway, dinner at Linwood’s is dressy, so we suited up in semi-formal fashion and were seated at a table. My mom, who is the director of a pre-school, is always recognized wherever we go. That evening, we ran into parents of a child at her school who bought us drinks, the in-laws of her best friend’s daughter, and some old friends. It took forever and a half before we could order.

My brother, who is a notoriously picky eater, ordered the three-pound lobster for $60. It was huge.

My sirloin in a black pepper sauce with roasted peppers and truffle garlic fries was mouth-watering at $35.

When desert came, I ate off my parents’ banana cream pie. My brother gave me a look for swiping a chunk of his orange cheesecake. That’s when the fun started. “What’re you still hungry?” he asked.

“Man, you better hope we don’t crash the car in the Andes on the way home, I might have to eat you.”

“Not if I eat you first.”

“I’ll just eat you preemptively, then.”

My brother pondered this for a moment. “The best meat’s in the rump.”

We were all in hysterics. The table next to us, close enough for this to be a Manhattan restaurant was trying desperately to ignore us, but I caught some of them wiping their eyes, trying to stop laughing.

So as the conversation moved on towards something other than cannibalism, I slowly took my extra fork, and lightly began poking my brother’s bicep.

“What are you doing?”

“Shh,” I whispered. “Just checking to see how ‘done’ you are. I’m getting hungry.”

Then I took some salt and pepper and began seasoning his arm, as my father paid the bill for dinner. Luckily, one of the gift certificates we had given them for an anniversary almost covered my brother’s dinner.

That’s when they dropped the bomb. “Guess who’ll be at Seder, next Tuesday night?”

I rattled off the names of the usual attendees to our Passover Seder: aunts, uncles, cousins. I couldn’t think who I was forgetting.

Apparently, some family friends were invited who are bringing along another friend. This friend of theirs is a diabetic, narcoleptic amputee. So things should be interesting.

“I call the seat opposite her,” I interrupted.

“Why?”

“So I can watch her nod out during dinner.”

So I’m hoping for some interesting stories.

READ THESE JOURNALS Uncle Bob SaraH

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