My body is spent. For too many days, I’ve been wracked with tears, with shivers, trapped in an overwhelming vortex of angst and abandonment. I haven't been able to explain it to my partner, to my children, or even to myself. I used to be the kind of person who saw teenagers or even younger Millennials out in public and thought to myself, They’re young and innocent. They don’t know what real sadness feels like yet. But I do.
Well, I was wrong. Until recently, I hadn’t experienced the profound and collective spirit-shattering of true loss, the sheer carapace where one emotional step in the wrong direction might send me careening to a place I might never escape.
So it’s with this sense of stake, for myself and my selfhood, that I feel the need to reach out online and mourn with my friends and readers, to express myself in the only way I am truly confident about, on social media.
I’m going to talk about the Noodles and Company that burned down.
It felt like it would be there forever, in that little mall near Lake Calhoun tucked in
the corner next to Caribou. For various members of my community and at various times, it was a sibling, a parent, a stepparent, a caregiver, a pillar. You always knew you’d see a familiar face, drown a bad day in a sea or tangy marinara or outrageously zippy Greek yogurt sauce, say yes to the big decadent brick of Rice Krispie bar even if you were counting carbs.
We saw our children and our neighbor’s children grow up, graduate from the kids’ menu to the adult cavatappi, macaroni, or Indonesian peanut saute. First dates over creamy tomato basil bisque and tall glasses of water blossomed into love, and many evenings, you could trace a family tree’s rococo roots and branches from generation to generation along a large communal table, all tucking in to a meal that fed their bellies but also nourished their soul.
The Noodles and Company was Minneapolis. Without it, we’re not the same and we’re never going to be the same. That day when a grease fire spiraled out of control was our own Buddy Holly, our JFK assassination, our Kent State rolled into one. And it wasn’t the kind of roll you slather butter on or use to sop up the last droplets of a creamy stroganoff sauce.
They say food is the only thing that touches all the senses at once, and the truth and impact of that really hit me this summer. As I sat with my daughter showing her the selfies we’d taken over the years in front of chicken Caesars, Pad Thais, and those simple but seductive buttered noodles, she didn’t understand why I couldn’t stop crying. She cried with me, though, and that only made me cry even harder.
Finally, here we are, faced with the need to mourn but also to heal, to share joyful memories and realize we will cope, because we have to cope, with this cruel world. This will change the way we mourn forever, leave a penne-shaped hole in our hearts and minds, and give rise to oh so many questions. Do we try to cope with other Noodles locations? Do we scour Google for attempts to recreate those dishes at home, even though we’ll never enjoy them in the same ambience? How do we build stronger interpersonal and familiar bonds?
In times of crisis, many find strength. We heal in number, in increments, together and separately. We drive past Calhoun Commons knowing that even though Whole Foods and Chipotle are still there, something’s missing. Something we took for granted, something that changed us all, and now that it’s gone, something we’ll never be able to understand. And somehow, at the end of it all, that enigma is the one place I think I might find the little gleam of sunlight that will turn this cultural, communal disaster into something bigger, better, more beautiful—and maybe someday, far in the future, we’ll all be a little bit more delicious again.
Well, I was wrong. Until recently, I hadn’t experienced the profound and collective spirit-shattering of true loss, the sheer carapace where one emotional step in the wrong direction might send me careening to a place I might never escape.
So it’s with this sense of stake, for myself and my selfhood, that I feel the need to reach out online and mourn with my friends and readers, to express myself in the only way I am truly confident about, on social media.
I’m going to talk about the Noodles and Company that burned down.
It felt like it would be there forever, in that little mall near Lake Calhoun tucked in
the corner next to Caribou. For various members of my community and at various times, it was a sibling, a parent, a stepparent, a caregiver, a pillar. You always knew you’d see a familiar face, drown a bad day in a sea or tangy marinara or outrageously zippy Greek yogurt sauce, say yes to the big decadent brick of Rice Krispie bar even if you were counting carbs.
We saw our children and our neighbor’s children grow up, graduate from the kids’ menu to the adult cavatappi, macaroni, or Indonesian peanut saute. First dates over creamy tomato basil bisque and tall glasses of water blossomed into love, and many evenings, you could trace a family tree’s rococo roots and branches from generation to generation along a large communal table, all tucking in to a meal that fed their bellies but also nourished their soul.
The Noodles and Company was Minneapolis. Without it, we’re not the same and we’re never going to be the same. That day when a grease fire spiraled out of control was our own Buddy Holly, our JFK assassination, our Kent State rolled into one. And it wasn’t the kind of roll you slather butter on or use to sop up the last droplets of a creamy stroganoff sauce.
They say food is the only thing that touches all the senses at once, and the truth and impact of that really hit me this summer. As I sat with my daughter showing her the selfies we’d taken over the years in front of chicken Caesars, Pad Thais, and those simple but seductive buttered noodles, she didn’t understand why I couldn’t stop crying. She cried with me, though, and that only made me cry even harder.
Finally, here we are, faced with the need to mourn but also to heal, to share joyful memories and realize we will cope, because we have to cope, with this cruel world. This will change the way we mourn forever, leave a penne-shaped hole in our hearts and minds, and give rise to oh so many questions. Do we try to cope with other Noodles locations? Do we scour Google for attempts to recreate those dishes at home, even though we’ll never enjoy them in the same ambience? How do we build stronger interpersonal and familiar bonds?
In times of crisis, many find strength. We heal in number, in increments, together and separately. We drive past Calhoun Commons knowing that even though Whole Foods and Chipotle are still there, something’s missing. Something we took for granted, something that changed us all, and now that it’s gone, something we’ll never be able to understand. And somehow, at the end of it all, that enigma is the one place I think I might find the little gleam of sunlight that will turn this cultural, communal disaster into something bigger, better, more beautiful—and maybe someday, far in the future, we’ll all be a little bit more delicious again.