Fought my way through a 20 minute line at 11:00 am at the soon-to-be-closed-forever deli and bakery of my youth earlier this week. The closer it gets to Doom-Day, the busier that place gets. 50 or so years in business and completely beloved by the community will have that effect I suppose. The couple that runs the place (pictured above when I first met them in the early 80s) are the ones who run it still. They have to be in their 80s themselves by now, actually. He has dementia pretty bad and doesn’t come to work every day, but she does. She still heads the baking and does a lot of front of house work. My brothers and I always get a warm personal welcome or a wave from the back or a hand squeeze at the checkout. I think we endeared ourselves to them with our consistency. The same sandwich for 20 years says as much about our consistency as theirs. Some simpatico there, I believe.
It’s getting sad, though. Half the menu has been erased. Staff has mostly sought out greener pastures, so it’s a very long wait with just the family working there now- their kids and spouses and such. While I was standing in line I saw the sandwich I wanted written on a chalkboard under the words: SANDWHICHES UNAVAILABLE TODAY. No big deal, the old standby would do just fine.
Having to stand in line forced me to listen to everyone else standing in line. At that hour, it was mostly boomers. Mostly talking about how the place was closing, and how they had come here every weekend since they had their old location in the 80s on Spring Street (same for me, but I didn’t join in). Had to suffer through a lot of awkward, but well intentioned and warm goodbyes, from guests who knew it would be their last stop to the owners, still hard at work for a few more weeks at lest.
I hate watching people navigate goodbyes. Lots of fumbling, inexperience, and heightened emotion- as one would expect, as would be natural. I hate goodbyes in general, myself. Always have. Didn’t understand why, for the longest time. I tried the Irish goodbye a few times at family parties because I thought I was just some shade of agoraphobic or attention averse- or perhaps my self esteem was so low that I didn’t think my existence was important enough to interrupt someone’s conversation to declare that I was removing it from their presence. But the Irish goodbyes never felt right. I felt sad for my own sake for not acknowledging our parting, and I felt rude for their sake for the same. For a while I went back to suffering the ritual of goodbyes, in general.
But then I met someone who showed me a different way. They never ever said goodbye, officially. Like people in the movies when they hang up the phone- but in person. And it worked. It worked great. I was floored by this concept. The secret? Just connect deeply with someone, any how, any way, for just a moment- over any topic, with any words that come to mind. Perhaps something warm and genuine. Maybe something quick witted and personal and funny. People know when a goodbye is coming, usually- so really, the words themselves do not necessarily need to be said.
What does need to be “said” is simply- “We are together right now, remember that we were.” Because the deep fundamental truth of living is that togetherness is always just a spark in the dark. All time with loved ones is temporary and should held in gratitude as such.
Just a moment of connection, a final word maybe even in transition as you are turning to leave, and quietly close the door behind you. This started working much better than the Irish goodbye for me, and after doing it a while I started to realize what bothered me so much about official “goodbyes.”
They felt like lies. Like a premature grab for closure before the door even closes. Like I should be putting these people or my feelings for them away, on the spot- or like I am delivering orders to others to do the same of me. A formal severance, when such is neither a thing that often happens, or a thing I usually want to happen anyway.
These are all thoughts I had before I made it half way to the counter. I was interrupted by a few new arrivals who, rather than get in the very basic single file line we all had going on, decided to just sort of stand awkwardly like a tumor on the side of an existing line. What is it with people and lines? Is there like, a gene that lets some people understand how they function and how to use them, and others just cannot grasp the concept? I was getting hungry at this point, so their awkward discordance with established hierarchy of norms I had gotten used to standing in was aggravating me- for I was the part of the line that the tumor decided to attach to.
Eventually the line advanced enough so that I was able to shoulder my way past the tumor to establish my line dominance and place therein, ahead of them- but unlike the line that ran all the way to the counter in front of me, I halted at the giant wooden cow that was placed in the middle of the room like a sign board, which had “Wait Here” written on it also, though now in barely visible letters. I held the line steady, letting the trespassers in front of me bleed off until the space between the cow and the ordering station was clear of traffic, the way the Counter prefers.
The lady that takes sandwich orders is a mean German woman, probably about my age. She had yelled at me earlier this summer for following the line and crowding the deli cooler ordering station:
“Wait back at the Cow, we will call you up.”
“Oh! Sure. No problem.”
There is a secret to dealing with mean German ladies of any age, old middle or young: don’t worry when they yell at you for something the first time- submit, listen to them, and remember. If they don’t have to yell at you twice- you will earn their respect.
With the pressure of the impatient line building behind me, and the space between me and the counter all cleared out, I had a nice view of the whole restaurant while I waited my turn on deck. It felt sad, like I said. Thinning out. A faded grey vestige of its former glory. And as I stood there in that briefest of moments before being called up to place my order, I swear it was like my entire Deli Life flashed before my eyes:
Autumn 1987. Unwrapping the foil paper on a picnic table with my young auburn hair’d mother by the magnus park twisty slide I was obsessed with.
Spring 1995. Track and field day at school. Exhausted from running the 500 meter. Sitting in the grass, unwrapping the foil paper.
Early autumn, 1996. Class trip to Mackinaw Island, pack your own lunch. Finding a spot in the shade of a bush with Gary, Mumma, and Peetree- in that giant open field underneath the old revolutionary war fort carved into the cliffs above. Unwrapping the foil paper.
Summer, 1999. It’s my lunch break at my last summer job between school seasons- doing lawn and other maintenance work at a condo complex that I’d ride my bike 5 miles to, every morning, at 6 am. It’s lunch time and my 5‘9” model blonde high school sweetheart has just pulled into my work for the first time, in front of my idiot coworkers, in jean bib overalls and a white tank top with a white bag in her hands to surprise me. It was the first time a woman had ever done anything really nice for me, like that, out of nowhere. At the picnic table, as she was saying how she got what she thought I might like, I unwrapped the foil paper in the late 90’s 17 year old sunshine.
Plenty of decades to go after that, but summer is where I lingered. Summers of coming into the very building I was standing in line in while it was fully alive, with many years to go. Coolers stocked with all kinds of hand picked items, before the age of general Coke sponsored beverage service. A full staff of teenagers and young adults my own age, some of whom I was friends with- some of whom I dated. Always the bustle and energy and pulse of life in that place.
The bustle and energy and pulse of life in my own breast, perhaps.
Mirrored. Similarly dimming in the waning seasons.
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