Weekly links: The gift of warm spaces

And some good reads for your Sunday

On Friday night, I went out to eat at one of my favorite restaurants with some of my favorite people. The occasion was significant because the restaurant is closing.

It’s not closing because our community didn’t support the restaurant. It’s closing because the owners are moving on.

Friday night was the last dinner I will eat at that restaurant. A new place will inevitably open. New places are always opening. Old places are always closing. Endings so often signal powerful new beginnings.

But this place was one of my favorites. The food was so good. So were the drinks. The color palette of the walls was gray blue and green. I loved the coup glasses and the blue and white tile behind the bar. I think of the meals I ate there. I loved to go there with my friend Majda. She and I would eat oysters on the patio and gossip. We’d put on our sunglasses and soak in the light like cats in a sunbeam. I brought so many dates there. Once, one of my dates wore khaki shorts to this restaurant, and a server, who is also a friend, messaged me later on social media to tell me that he could not believe I was dating a man who wore a rumpled polo and khaki shorts on a first date. I brought my kids there for Mother’s Day brunch and the general manager drew a picture of Hobbes on the to-go box with my son’s leftover French toast. I brought my kids there for my birthday dinner — a family meal where we celebrated our little three-person unit. I had a long boozy brunch there with a friend after she lost an election. And another boozy brunch after a friend got a divorce.

For me, there wasn’t one huge event that happened in that space, only so many little ones — those little moments, backlit by the warm glow of the place, fueled by an expertly made negroni and tuna crudo. I think of what it means to create a space, so softly lovely, so gentle and good, that it becomes a reassuring backdrop in a time in a place for so many people.