Dawn comes slow on December 9th, 2025.
The chalkboard says 38°, a smear of clouds, and a reminder that sometimes the wrong train takes you to the right station. I have lived that one. Most of us have.
You don’t learn it from textbooks. You learn it at places like an old Chicago diner where the coffee burns your tongue and the world makes a little more sense.
For me, that place was Gossage Grill, tucked on North Avenue just west of Harlem. A joint where the steam off a chipped white coffee mug curled up like the city taking its first breath in the morning. Neon buzzed in the window, painting the stainless counter in tired white and stubborn gray.
If you ever wanted to know who you were, or who you were becoming, you sat at the counter with your Oldman or stumbled in after a night of drinking with your buddies.
Jimmy was the overnight cook. More like a grill master. The spatula cracked against the griddle, sending up that holy trinity of bacon, butter, and burnt edges. Back then, we thought Jimmy was just “different.” We didn’t have the vocabulary or the wisdom. Years later, with life behind me and a son of my own, I can see it clear as day... Jimmy was autistic.
He took more grief from drunk kids than he ever deserved and he still fed us, every damn time, without complaint.
Cold air sneaked in with every swing of the door, mixing with the warmth of frying eggs and wet wool coats. The customer's sneakers screeched across cracked linoleum. The radiator clanked its usual complaint. The first sunbeam slid through the tired windows and turned a plate of hash browns into something like gold.
And Jimmy, steady as ever, kept the world humming low. Truckers, night-shifters, old-timers, lonely people, college kids... all trading pieces of themselves like loose change.
That diner taught me more about life than half the classrooms I ever sat in. It taught me that the wrong train doesn’t mean a ruined trip. Sometimes it just means you end up exactly where someone up there wanted you to be.
Hanukkah in five days.
Christmas in sixteen.
Sunrise at 7:07.
Sunset at 4:20.
Another day to get it right, or at least to sit down, warm your hands around a mug, and listen for the wisdom coming off a hot grill at dawn. Gossage has been closed for years, but there are still diners around town to pass experience and knowledge off at.
