The Luxury of Dining Out Alone

When I was a but a wee snippet of a girl, whenever I would eat out at a restaurant with my mother, she would always discreetly call to my attention anyone in the restaurant eating at a table alone. By "discreetly" I mean that she would point, lean in my direction, and whisper loudly in my ear while looking at them.
"See that? He/she is eating alone. How sad."
"Why sad?"
"Because it means that he/she doesn't have anyone to eat with. That's what I dread most. So lonely. That's what I'm sacred of."
"Eating alone?"
"Yah! Can you imagine having to just sit at a table by yourself, nobody to talk with, everybody staring at you wondering why you're alone?"
My mother is a fearful woman in many respects. In particular, she fears a lonely old age. She fears old age in general, attested to by the many anti-aging measures she has taken to keep her looking youthful. She lives in fear of the day when her body will one day smell like "old person", of the day when her skin will wrinkle and her jowls sag. She especially fears that her children will stick her in an old age home. On our annual Chinese New Year trips to the "Home for the Aged", with every red packet and pair of oranges we would hand out, she would whisper, "See how sad? Their own children don't even care about them. You can never do this to Mummy, right? Right?" Even now, I can almost hear the words hissed into my ear, feel her grip tightening on my arm. She fears old age for her children as well. When she came to visit me, she was horrified that I didn't wear gloves for dishwashing. "Your hands will wrinkle. I just want you to take care of yourself," she said, buying me hand-moisturiser and a new pair of gloves. "Your sister studies too much. I tell her that she needs to sleep more but she won't listen to me. She looks....so OLD." My sister is sixteen years old.

But I digress. I digress greatly.

The point is that mother seems to link dining alone with an involuntarily isolated and desolate condition. With not being wanted, not having friends or family. Why, after all, would anyone want to eat out alone?

Yet, there is something pleasant about dining alone once in a while. It's calming, soothing, to sit there and slowly pick at your food, to cast a slow, serene gaze over the restaurant and the other patrons, to glance out the window and let your mind wander aimlessly. You don't need to chit-chat. You don't need to wonder whether the other person is enjoying his/her food and whether you should feel bad if he/she isn't because you picked the restaurant.

In short, you can just take a chill pill.

I don't think I ever fully appreciated the experience of dining alone until graduate school, when it became a luxury activity, equivalent almost to going to a spa, or buying cute shoes. Dining with friends has a purpose...it's justifiable. The price of a meal + tax + tip is well worth the opportunity to get to know someone better, to catch up and spend time with another body. The same price spent on oneself when one's self can just eat the leftovers in the fridge becomes extravagance. I talked about this with my friend Aaron, aptly enough, over a meal at a restaurant. He lives in an area where there a lot of restaurants. "Have you tried a lot of these places?" I asked. "Actually, not really," he replied. "I usually only eat out when I'm eating with other people." I nodded in agreement.

If, God willing, I don't perish before my ripe old age by having a crate full of French horns fall on me from a great height, I think I would like to be one of those elderly old women upon whom my mother pours her pity. I would like to hobble into a restaurant and order imperiously a table for one. I would like to place my bag and shawl on the table where my absent dining comapanion would have his/her plate. I would like to coolly return the gaze of the younger woman across the room regarding me with a sympathetic eye and, raising an eyebrow disdainfully, tear off a hunk of chicken with my teeth and chew it with my mouth open, grinning all the while in her direction. And afterwards, I would like to stretch my feet under the table as far as they could go, and wave them around, revelling in the fact that I don't need to avoid any other feet that might otherwise be there if I weren't such a "lonely old lady".