Art's

We drove in silence, as per usual. After thirty-three years of marriage, there wasn't much small talk to be had. Looking through the passenger window I saw the over-saturated city street of Ventura Boulevard. As we passed too many Starbucks, the memories flooded my mind of summer nights walking this very street with my neighborhood friends. Stopping into Thrifty's on the corner of Laurel Canyon to grab a scoop of our favorite ice cream. Sometimes we attempted to sneak into the City Theatre to catch the last hour of that week's production.

Above all traditions, one stuck out to me. I could still remember the delight in my parent's eyes every time we walked into Art's Deli. My father had been a stoic Jewish immigrant that had escaped to Los Angeles in the early months of 1940 from German-occupied Poland. He came alone and with nothing. Four years later he met my mother, a beautiful Israeli actress making small waves in the bustling film industry. From there, they married and settled in the hub of all of it, the neighborhood of Studio City.

My parents had been coming to Art's Delicatessen since it's Grand Opening in 1957. They could walk there from their modest home south of the boulevard; my older siblings following close behind. By the time I could remember going there, my family had been regulars for nearly fifteen years. We would sit at a booth, the six of us. The food was something that my father could never get enough of. I imagined it reminded him of his mother and his home, of which he hadn't seen either since his departure from Europe. My mother, on the other hand, came to the deli to see the look of joy on my father's face. She would jokingly nudge him and proclaim that she could make more authentic matzo-ball soup. He would just smile and squeeze her hand lovingly.

Growing up I had always imagined my marriage to be similar to that of my parents. It was all I had known. Loving, kind, gentle, and patient. All things that I longed for after I had tied the knot on my nineteenth birthday in 1982. My blinded love for my husband slowly faded once we left my home in Los Angeles. My naïve decision to marry him landed us in his hometown of Boise, Idaho. A strange place for a Jew. He had been in Los Angeles on business when we met, and two weeks later we were married. And just like that I packed my suitcase and headed north to my new life. I remember being excited; anxiously anticipating how life would be with a man that seemed to be everything I wanted. Tall, successful, and honest. After many years filled with our own children, his own displeasure with his life, and my fleeting patience, we found ourselves to be strangers. We never considered divorce, but maybe we should have.

When my eldest sister had called me stating our father had passed away at the age of ninety-two, it's as if I had been awakened from a trance. I tried desperately to remember the last time I had called my father. Was it on his birthday last spring? Or had it been on Father's Day this year? Had I remembered to call on Father's Day? Time seemed to melt together and reform itself into a very tangible feeling of guilt. When I asked my husband if he would come with me to Los Angeles for my father's funeral, I expected him to refuse. He didn't. Sometimes I kicked myself for making my husband out to be a monster in my head rather than a human with flaws. Of course, he said yes. I was his wife after all.

On our last day in my home city, the day after the funeral, I had asked him if we could visit Art's. It was one of the few places that still held meaning to me that was still up and running in 2015. I held my breath after asking him, awaiting his rejection of my request, but it didn't come. Again, I silently chastised myself for assuming the worst of him.

When we finally arrived at our destination, I was grateful to be released from the thick silence of the car. There it was. Art's Delicatessen. It looked like a memory, despite the fact it was now sandwiched between two modern establishments. I walked inside leaving my husband to gripe at the parking meter. When I entered, a wave of nostalgia hit me. Miraculously the small deli had the same smell almost four decades later. It smelt of cooked fish and salt. The walls were covered in framed photos of a town I used to belong to.

Once my irritated husband joined me inside, the hostess sat us in a booth that I had sat in many times before. Once he had complained again about the traffic of the city, the noise that kept him up at night, and once more about the parking meter outside, my husband was quiet for the rest of the meal. I ate my meal as peacefully as I could. A heavy feeling fell over me, as I felt more alone at that moment than ever before. Here I was, in a place that served me as a beacon of joy and love. But I felt neither of those. I looked longingly across the table. I would have given anything at that moment for my husband to be replaced by my father. For him to look up at me from his soup and smile his crooked smile that exposed his lopsided dimples. To have him pinch my knee cap under the table playfully. To see him look admirably at my mother next to him. I wanted to feel my sibling's shoulders nudging me on either side. To feel the laughter erupt through our throats as my dad blew bubbles in his Coca-Cola, as my mother looked at him with disapproving eyes, all while fighting a smile.

Moments in time that were, now, just those. Moments. Memories. Never to be created again. What mattered at the present time hadn't mattered then. The time spent was never wasted. We were young, we were alive, we were happy. I was all those things back then, but none of them now. I wondered if I could ever feel them again. I hoped. I desperately hoped. I decided at that moment that I would try. I would try to be whom I had lost many years ago. My mother and father no longer had time, but I, I had time. I was still alive. I could be happy again. I could feel young again. I could feel those things again. I would try. I had to try. For the sake of all things lost, I needed to try and feel again. It started with this moment, and where it ended, I wasn't sure yet. But I would no longer be afraid because I knew one thing for sure. I was home.