Accept the invitation

I love my parent’s beach house. It is the one place I can just be. None of the modern amenities like cable TV or Wi-Fi, just board games, a wide beach to walk and lots of windows that pull in the sea air. My husband is not a fan. Twelve hours without the golf channel or Cops and he is climbing the walls. To keep our marriage intact, I go alone. Last Saturday night I went to the rooftop of the new LBI Hotel. The views of the bay are endless and the people-watching is not bad either. After snapping a few pictures of the sunset, I went downstairs for dinner stopping in the ladies’ room first. The wallpaper was pictures of old postcards and as I stepped back to capture it for my Instagram feed a woman asked if I would like to be in the picture. “No thank you, I am not in the habit of taking pictures in the ladies room.” After a few sentences, she learned that I was dining alone and insisted that I join her for dinner. Imagine the look on Eddie’s face, her husband, when we walked out and she announced, “This is Tracey, I met her in the bathroom, and she is joining us for dinner.”
For the next hour, three complete strangers talked about 911, goat yoga, career advancement, and the miracle of the expanding waistline as we age. It was a first and it was fun. Next week Nashville…