Great things can come from the worst situations

“Sometimes the best things can come out of the worst situations”

I said to my husband one night

As we sat across a small table from each other,

A tiny lantern glowing between us

At a 1920’s themed restaurant and bar

With very high ceilings.

I told him that because he had asked me

What I thought about the situation

With a girl named Skitzii making his favorite cocktail.

He didn’t like Skitzii, but the cocktail was amazing.

For starters,

Skitzii wasn’t even her real name.

I don’t know where she got that nickname

But she never would tell us her real name.

Which only further compounded my husband’s theory

That the “stage name” Skitzii was meant to be an “in your face”

Red flag that the girl was Schitzophrenic.

And he was probably right.

She distrusted everyone,

Lived life out of a suitcase

And never stayed in one place long.

Every job she had wound up firing her

Or she quit after deciding people were against her.

That’s how she wound up in our lives.

She was working at the coffee shop we always went to.

And one day, we saw her storm out of there

And angrily stomp away down the street.

So I went up to her and asked what happened.

“They just fired me!” she said.

And myself, with my tendency toward poor judgement

With people

Figured she needed a friend.

So we sat down with her at the Subway next door

And let her vent.

And then I attempted to make friends.

Soon she was swimming in our neighborhood pool.

She had been a bartender by previous experience

So she mixed my husband a few special drinks like a pro.

One was a cocktail with some actual peppery spice,

Called a barbacoa.

And just as fast as she arrived,

She departed.

Only a week or two into being friends,

She got mad at my husband over some silly misunderstanding.

She thought he was making fun of her.

He was not.

But she unloaded a lifetime of hate into a few choice retorts.

And I tried to console her and bring her back down to earth

But instead, it only escalated the fight

So it was between her, my husband and myself

Because he grew angry with me for not simply rebuking her.

In the end, she wound up blocked from our social media.

Months would go by and I chose to forget it ever happened.

But it left such a bad taste in his mouth

That he still talks about her today.

How hateful she was, a man-hater who made him feel small.

And for no good reason.

And then, that night he asked me the aforementioned question

About his cocktail,

We had been arguing.

There had been unrest and stress between us

Because of the proverbial knots we had to unkink in our lives-

Knots like friends I had entertained that weren’t “for” him

Or our marriage.

And that’s when our waiter came to take our order.

He wasn’t hungry, so I only ordered a small meal for myself.

He asked for the very talented bartender at that place

To make him the barbacoa.

The waiter struggled with the recipe for a moment,

Then went to relay the order to the bartender.

He came back with something that wasn’t exactly right,

But according to my husband

Was “good enough”.

He sipped it for a moment,

Then asked me

“How come Skitzii was so awful, but she made the drink perfectly?”

I paused for a moment, honestly trying to come up with

A wise and non-sarcastic answer.

My eyes wandered up to the steel rafters in the ceiling,

The antique ice making tools hanging from thick chains,

The incandescent lights dangling down.

I took a deep breath,

And that’s when it came to me.

“Sometimes the best things come from the worst situations.”

And as the words left my mouth,

Floating across the space between us,

The lantern gently flickering

As they reached his ears....

Tiny film reels played out in my mind.

Brief glimpses in my mind’s eye of loves that blossomed

In the darkest of times

Of babies born to bless and heal broken homes

And I realized that my statement encompassed

So much more than a good drink mixed by a troubled girl.

I could name ten or more times the statement was true

In my life

But I will just leave it here for now.

There are still some storms that haven’t passed

Some problems I haven’t solved

And those are where I will be watching

For that great thing.

It’s there.

I know it is.