Climate Change

Donna and I ventured out to one of our old haunts, an old-school family-owned Italian restaurant that has catered to generations of locals. A place where customer names are known as well as all the names of their kids. Where menus are looked at, but the waiter already knows what you want. It feels like home. This is our first time back in well over a year. 

As I silently watch the ice in my glass melt I can’t help but notice that the climate in this place has changed. We are sitting at the bar as usual. It is not much —  just eight chairs— tucked away in a corner where all the professional kibitzers hang. But something is amiss. The long time bartender has vanished. Tonight it feels more like a lifeboat being dragged out into an unknown sea with the riptide of change.

We are all trying to get back to shore, the way it was; before all the “us versus them” shouting, and before “the visitor that just won’t leave” arrived, before this endless winter of our discontent. It was John Steinbeck who predicted this winter long before George R. R. Martin coined the phrase “winter is coming,”so I must acknowledge appropriating the title of his last book. So here we are, almost two years after the arrival of the visitor that won’t leave and we are done. Doesn’t matter where on the pH scale of politics you may stand, we all agree on the point, we want to move on.

Eddie is the name of our boatswain’s mate behind the bar tonight. A long time crew member of this restaurant, a master of many skills, and part of the skeleton crew that kept this place afloat during the worst of the lockdown. Eddie deftly divides his attention among us and the waiters servicing the room of tables. The owner and namesake of this place is on deck too. As he has done for years he dutifully circulates about the room, greeting each customer, occasionally stepping behind the bar to pitch in when Eddie gets overwhelmed. Normally he wears an easy smile and offers a touch on the shoulder or a handshake. Not much touching is going on these days because of the visitor that won’t leave however. He is smiling a lot less too. Certainly a lot less than the portrait hanging on the wall of his younger self, looking smart and proud in his chef’s jacket.

I grab his attention on his next swing behind the bar. How’s it going? Glad you guys are still here, it is good to be back. Is business getting better? I asked. His answer surprises me. 

Having only arrived in America in the ‘90s himself, he retorts in a thick accent of his native Italian, “I can’t wait to get out of California. You can’t do business here anymore. The immigrants can come have it all. I am done.” 

For once I am speechless, unable to muster my usual quip or twist to a conversation. I take a moment to study him more closely. He is serious and can tell he wasn’t looking for a response anyway. This wasn’t a conversation actually, just an opportunity to vent at my expense. I wonder though which class of immigrant to which he was referring. Hispanics? Almost his entire staff is Mexican or Latin American, as is the case in most restaurants. In fact, even as he ranted, the conveying of orders among his staff was in Spanish, not English or even Italian. As it has always been, it are the most recent immigrants willing to accept the hardest work at the lowest pay for a chance for something better from which they came.

As usual the screens above the bar stream the evening’s sports; basketball, ice hockey, a college football game. It is one of the constants that customers appreciate about this place, Heck, on slow nights this place would even put on a cricket game if they had to. Tonight however, the owner reaches up to the screen in the corner next to the server station, flips off a close scoring basketball game to put on Newsmax. It is blurting out a barrage of “breaking news” on climate change. More proof of the charade being played upon America the announcer is exclaiming. The news banner on the bottom intersperses our attention with new followups on a never-ending Hillary Benghazi story. The sense of urgency is palatable. Even the servers look up to listen in between passing their drink orders to Eddie.

The pace of the restaurant pulls the owner away to other parts. I am left to watch the Newsmax stream alone with the servers. Newsmax isn’t being helpful in identifying the source of the owner’s ire. Their latest COVID-19 update only reminds us the border “is wide open” for illegals. How that ties into the health of this restaurant isn’t apparent to me. I scan the crowd sitting at bar to the right of me. My wife and I had been in conversation with a couple earlier. We were talking about the coyotes who recently “immigrated” into our neighborhood. While the coyotes have contributed to lowering the domestic cat population, I doubt they siphoned off business. Now the conversation on this side of the bar has grown cold. Further down the bar though I hear another couple chatting with Eddie. They order the house special cocktail, a Manhattan personalized with the last name of the owner, which he added to signify his unique take on the drink. I pull out my old trick and order the namesake cocktail from Eddie as well. It works, a smile comes to Eddie’s face and he assures me that I will be pleased. 

While I wait for my drink I glance up at the screen and see Newsmax is back to proving the fallacy of climate change by saying the recent years of storms are not proof of anything. I try to keep my thoughts to myself. Better to stare down and watch my words swirl silently in my glass. But I falter. I say out loud, “But that’s not true!” My short burst catches the attention of the servers, one of whom breaks out of his Spanish to reply to me in English. 

“Of course it is”, he says. 

I start to go down the rabbit hole of bad bar conversation. I try to explain to him about ice cores drilled into the Arctic, how we can measure CO2 levels going back thousands of years, how everything started to change with the industrial revolution, how in the last century the levels have skyrocketed way beyond anything before. 

He smiles a polite smile. How silly I must sound to him I think to myself. He bats down my argument with a simple reply. “Well I am 40 years old and I haven’t seen any change”. 

Well the poker hand of age is in my favor I think to myself. “Well, I am almost 70 and my wife and I have seen change. I proceed to tell him of our time in lake regions of New Hampshire. How back in the seventies the ice on the lakes would get so thick during winters, loggers would drive eighteen wheelers out to the islands to harvest trees, which they would then haul back over the ice. “In the last few years though, the lake doesn’t even freeze over” at all I tell him. My wife nodding in agreement to reinforce what I am saying. 

He smiles again, unfazed. “Well, I guess that means we all just need to move further north” he jokingly replies and turns away to deliver drinks to his customers. 

My wife and I are taken aback, not from his abruptness, but the simplistic core of truth in what he said. In his world, thousands are traveling north, escaping the hurricane ravaged and the politically corrupt countries of their origins in search for change from what has changed. Long-timers already living here are moving too. Some are going further north, some to the mountains, others to wherever new place they think their specific political climate suits them better. Everyone is becoming an immigrant one way or another. 

Mercifully, Eddie arrives with the Manhattan. The rye and vermouth balance each other nicely and darker reddish hue vaguely remind me of an Italian Negroni. I wonder if the secret ingredient of namesake’s cocktail might be a splash of Campari instead of the typical bitters. I don’t bother asking though as I have lost any further interest in conversation. Better to sit quietly and not rock this boat anymore. 

A few days later and I still can’t let the immigrant comment go. Maybe it is something closer to home I begin to wonder. My wife is Chinese, but certainly blended families not anything new these days. But now occurred to me now just how homogeneous was the restaurant clientele. No other pan asians, no blacks or browns in any shade, the thoughts came to mind. Segmented by age as well. Even though footsteps away from one of the largest titans of tech, none of those workers seemed to be customers on that night. Was it in the features of my wife he saw immigrant, I wondered. 

I wrote this story using the present tense to preserve a sense of the moment but actually over a month has passed since it happened. It has been stuck in my head, struggling not just for the right words, but conflicted if it even needs to be told.  I want to be careful with words. The visitor that won’t leave has a new name. One month ago “Omicron” didn’t even exist as a word. Now, the word itself is at the beginning of almost every sentence. It drowns out all the other words and is practically the only word people can hear. One month ago we eagerly anticipated Thanksgiving, we went to a favorite restaurant in thankfulness and in anticipation of celebration with others. Instead we found division and discord was still keeping many of us apart. And now we have yet another interloper. Not just a purveyor of illness, one more storm to weather in the changing climate of lives. One good thing at least, no one is complaining about immigrants for the time being. 

So here comes Christmas. I should have had my words gift wrapped and sent out by now. Instead I took them back. Back to the restaurant that cooked them up in the first place. We took our daughter and her friend too. Sat at a table this time. Just like regular people do. Eddie even came over with his simile to say hello. I could see the owner over behind the bar. Got up and walked over to the bar. “I’ll have one of your Manhattans if I may”, I asked him. 

“We will bring it over” was his simple reply. I couldn’t tell if he recognized me from last time or not. Doesn’t matter, it was still a good drink and his cocktail makes the words taste better. Better yet, Newsmax wasn’t on this night. An even though no one seemed to be watching, Steph Curry was on the screens, making 3-point NBA history as the new all time 3-point leader, in Manhattan! 

So what is the point of this story? Frankly it doesn’t have a point. There is no point because we haven’t gotten to a point. We might not even be on the path to a point yet. It is about how we are responding to change. Today it is New Year’s Eve. With this last paragraph of this story tomorrow begins anew. Possibilities begin anew. A time to recognize that change can be for the good as well, where youthful optimism is our true North Star. A time to remember to keep each other close, remember the best times and pull together on the oars.  

Happy New Year everyone.