Writer Spotlight: Kelly Rook Daly
Kelly Rook Daly is a beautiful human, teacher, creative, and vulnerable soul-sharer. Check her out on Substack. I hope you enjoy her musings as much as I have.
A few years ago, I found myself getting impatient at a little café in Paris — the server seemed to be ignoring me, and my North American impulse to get things moving kicked in fast. But then I looked around. No one else was in a rush. People were lingering, savoring, being. The problem wasn’t the service — it was my relationship to productivity. Somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten how to sit still, how to let leisure be enough. Paris, in its quiet way, reminded me. This piece of Kelly’s resonated with me for this (and many other reasons). Enjoy!
A Woman of Leisure - Kelly Rook Daly
“This is a city of leisure,” my friend remarked, as we were dining at 2 pm on a Friday, relishing in a crisp chenin blanc, remarking on the fact that there was no sense of urgency to leave, despite the fact that we had finished dining hours ago.
The server occasionally came by to pour a splash of wine into our flamingo-engraved glasses as laughter twinkled throughout the space, punctuating the afternoon with the soft soundtrack of delight. In front of us, the pastry chef prepared trays of elaborate chocolate tarts, no doubt for the upcoming dinner service. I felt this symbiosis around me, which stemmed from a sense of balance between work and relaxation, passion and ease.
In the states, I’m used to servers urging patrons to get up and leave, in ways both subtle and overt. Given that I worked at multiple restaurants over the course of ten years, I know all the tricks: Clear plates as soon as the last bite is taken, drop a check if they aren’t ordering dessert, and one that feels especially passive aggressive—stop filling water glasses once a table closes out, to reduce the instinct to linger.
It always felt a little wrong but the more tables you turn, the more tips you make. In a broken system where employers pay servers less than minimum wage, putting the pressure on customers to pay them a living wage, it makes sense why the dining out experience is not intended to be leisurely at all. It is efficiency masked as a memorable experience.
The irony is, everything is more memorable when done slowly and mindfully, especially eating. A leisurely dining experience affects the quality of one’s interactions. Inevitably the taste of food, consumed slowly, seeps into the words that you speak, inspiring conversation more profuse than you ever thought possible.
And when it is time to go, hours later, and you venture beyond the parameters of the restaurant’s walls, there becomes a richness unparalleled to engaging with the world with a sense of time on your side. A confidence stems from the notion that there is no finish line to reach in a given day, other than the inevitable one we are all moving towards, its arrival unknown.
I see here how the pace of life transmutes longevity, even if only in one’s perception of aging and time, and how much less consumed with aging I have suddenly become. Each gray hair now (and they seem to be multiplying), feels like a marker of a specific moment where I actually felt myself getting older and wiser, whereas in LA any discovery of a new, spindly white hair felt like the universe taunting me, a manifestation of all the things I hadn’t done and how I’d never get to do them when I was young. All I could think was of the youth I needed to preserve, the ways I should cover up the inevitable fact that I am getting older.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to stay young, and as a woman, it’s a constant battle. We long for our exterior to match the interior. For our youthful, flowery heart to maintain cherubic features; forever wide-eyed, rosy-cheeked, skin soft as petals.
Yet I am starting to see that they match more than I thought, for the more at peace I am with myself, the more I see the beginnings of crow’s feet around my eyes. I see how joy and laughter directly translate to smile lines which I have been conditioned to resent but that symbolize all the good times. Can I choose to see these changes as a perk of aging: A more aligned version of self.
I find myself becoming a woman of leisure, allowing questions to remain open-ended, letting thoughts pass like fluffy clouds in a crystalline blue sky; gently and with no forced conclusion. I’d like to feel less in a hurry to get to some perceived destination, less inclined to hide the way my body shows age; try instead to take a breath and enjoy the ride. After all, in a city of leisure, it would be a disservice not to.