“How’s the baby?”

Looking up from the U-Scan computer at the grocery store, I start beaming with the pride of a happily exhausted parent.

“A month old! Today!” I reply, scampering over with pictures. “Look at the smiles!”

The “baby” in question is my restaurant, Pepperhead, and I do, embarrassingly enough, carry around pictures of opening day, and the latest happy groups and families that came in to eat, talk, laugh and enjoy themselves.

It’s only been a month since opening, day, but it’s been nearly a year in planning, plotting and arranging. Looking back a year, I wasn’t even living in the U.S.A. when my father and I started to talk about the possibility of opening a restaurant. I was working for a graduate program in Italy, with no plans for moving back to the States, and not even a flicker of an idea about starting and running a small business in my hometown.

My, how things change. My days are now filled with bookkeeping, schedules, deliveries, bills, meetings, and, of course, hostessing, which I do all day, every day we’ve been open. Except maybe tonight.

My brothers and their wives made the journey to Cortez, Colorado, to be home for Thanksgiving, something my family hasn’t done for probably seven or eight years because one or more of us had been out of the country. To allow for some sibling bonding and family time, I had arranged for a good friend (suitably, her name is Angel, which fits her role well) to fill in for me. But I can’t seem to make myself leave.

All I can think of is all the things that could go wrong if I’m not there. The cash register could malfunction. The credit card machine could jam. Angel might not be able to rethread the paper for the printers on either machine. Waitresses could be rude to her. Customers could be rude to her. I could have forgotten roughly a million things that she might need to know. Worst of all, she won’t do things exactly the way I do them, which is the crime most annoying to control freaks everywhere.

So I’m panicking. I’ve been out to my car and back to the hostess station five times to tell her one last thing. And check one last thing. And tell the waitresses (all experienced hands) one that thing. The kitchen staff has watched all of this with a certain amount of amusement. Finally, my dad pulls me into the kitchen.

“Your hostess just told off a bunch of customers, and they all got really angry and left,” he said.

“Ohmygod.  Ohhhhhhh, that’s so bad. Really?” I slump a little. I knew this was going to happen. Disaster. Should never have planned to leave.

“Of course not. I’m messing with you. Go home.” He laughs a little at me. Then he waves over Rya, my friend from childhood and right-hand man in the kitchen. “Rya, calm her down and make her go home.”

Rya gives a great hug. I try breathing and find that my lungs are working once again. My heart slows down.

“We’re fine. The waitresses are fine. It’s all fine. Go home. Your brothers are waiting for you,” he says, moving me through the kitchen and depositing me in the hall. “Go home!”

And I do. It’s a fantastic night of poker and catching up with my sibs. And the next morning, everything is, in fact, fine. Leaving my baby is a hard, hard thing, but at least the first time is over.

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