The year is 2021, and my family and I are at the airport.

After a full year of racial and financial stress, California fires whose smoke blotted out the sun as far north as Seattle, and feeling more and more misanthropic as time went, my husband and I had decided that we were going to look into moving out of the country. Now, like most people in the US, “out of the country” meant, to me, some place most likely cold, where I’d continue to be the token Black person everywhere I went — think Canada or the United Kingdom.

But my husband had other ideas.

You’ve probably read the title of this post, and I’m betting you’ve figured out that he was thinking about Costa Rica. And, after he practically gave me a full powerpoint presentation, I was down to check some places out to see if I wanted to live here.

So, January of 2021, the four of us — me, my husband, and our at-the-time five and seven year old — packed some bags and showed up at the airport to get on our flight to Costa Rica. The kids were excited. I was trepidatious, but ready. We were all looking forward to starting on our first steps on what promised to be a true adventure.

Too bad those steps were stopped before they began. We missed our flight. Neither my husband nor I had ever missed a flight in our lives.

Now, I didn’t know this at the time, but Costa Rica was already teaching me a lesson, and I wasn’t even there yet. It’s very common, I think, to be hit with something like a missed flight and to respond with some form of pissiness. Tears, yelling, pouting, stress-eating…all of it is a possibility at the Fuck This Buffet, and at the time, I almost decided to sample one or (all) of those options. My husband and I were snappy with each other as we tried to find a hotel to stay at until we could catch the next flight out the following day.

The Redemption Arc

The hotel was easy enough to find. We even got them to agree to hold onto our luggage until check-in. It was almost as if, once that part was taken care of, some the fire left us. No one was angry anymore; now we were just a bit lost. We had a whole day to kill. What to do?

We wound up wandering into downtown Orlando, to Lake Eola Park. With it’s lush green, clean trails, and tranquil lake, it was hard to remember that anything negative had happened that morning. The sky was a perfect blue, clouds puffy and lazy. It was still technically morning, so the only other people around were painters and people reading on benches. It was like something off of a greeting card.

“Hey look!” I said. “Swan boats!”

And sure enough, there were giant pedal boats shaped like waterfowl, waiting for someone to rent them. We were the first.

My husband and I pedaled the swan boat around Lake Eola while the kids ordered us to pedal faster, despite not having to use their damned legs at all. We pointed out cool buildings, art installations, and interesting people going by. At one point, my little girl yelled “WHEE!” despite us going 2 MPH.

When we arrived back at the shore, we were all much more cheerful, and we decided to walk the park before finding somewhere to eat. Along the way, we got to pet two dogs, and someone giving out donated snacks supplied our children with a goodie bag each. The trees swayed as ducks and swans nestled under them to rest. I think it was about then that I realized that it was too nice of a day to be angry. The plane would be there tomorrow.

My realization was punctuated with a stomach growl to end all stomach growls. I was hungry. My kids were, too, despite just having snacks. So we decided to drive around to look for a place to have brunch.

Orlando is rife with nice, swanky places to have brunch. Places with pretty, Instagram-worthy cocktails and cafe-style seating and probably a peacock on the back patio. All of those places were overfull. We wound up driving back toward our hotel.

We were staying at a place that was surrounded by chain restaurants, and my husband took umbrage. He wrinkled his nose at Macaroni Grill and Chili’s, pouted a little at a Firehouse Subs.

“We’re in a city!” He whined. “I want to try a local place.”

Then he remembered that he was in the car with me and two hangry demons and pulled into a chain restaurant called Rock & Brews.

Rock & Brews is Hard Rock Cafe if it took shit a little less seriously. All of the food and drinks are named after famous songs or musicians. The waitstaff all wear music-themed buttons. You have to yell your order over blaring AC/DC. You know how it is.

And I’m going to just tell you now that if you were hoping that I’d trash Rock & Brews, or tell you it sucked, I will never in my life do that to one of my new favorite restaurants. Rock & Brews forever. I heart Rock & Brews.

This is a Purple Haze. Or Maybe it’s a Smoke on the Water. I don’t remember. It was good, that’s all you need to know.

It wasn’t the food that did it for me. It wasn’t the drinks (though the Smoke on the Water and Purple Haze did soften the day for me). It was the fact that our waiter, whose name I’m ashamed to say I don’t remember, heard about our missed flight and immediately did all he could to make our day better. He comped our drinks. He brought dessert for the kids. He told his manager so that she could present us with a voucher for a free appetizer the next time we came in.

When we left, I was a Rock & Brews fan for life and I’ll fight anyone who says otherwise.

That night, my daughter and son fell asleep almost immediately. I still have a picture of them. They’re facing each other, their hair splayed every-which-way, their mouths hanging open. They’re the perfect testament to a full day.

I think about this often, about how that day started out rough, about how it had started in a way that I would have once found disastrous. And yet, it turned out to be one of the best days I’ve ever had, one that I still look at pictures from once in awhile.

It’s a lesson that Costa Rica taught me before I even set foot in it, one that I’ve had to relive again and again in different ways. Shit just happens here. Life takes weird twists and turns, and things happen that you didn’t plan on and that you sure as hell didn’t want. But in the end, if you handle it with an “OK then, what’s next?” kind of attitude, you wind up in a place that’s not where you expected, but that’s still pretty damned great.

It’s a lesson that can be a struggle, but that I’d never trade in a million years.

That, and I show up for international flights, like, 3 hours in advance now.

My mama didn’t raise no fool.