Three people, one pizza and a bottle of wine won at last year’s office White Elephant can still make a very good night.
Add a bowl of Chef Sid’s pickles, because they make nearly everything better, someone remembers that twenty years ago you would have been getting ready to go out at this hour. This leads to stories about clubs you can no longer remember the names of, shoes you cannot and do not want to wear anymore and nights whose details have improved with age. Before anyone leaves, somebody finds the ice cream in the freezer, so naturally you have some too.
Across town, two people are several episodes deep into Ted Lasso, sharing a pizza and feeling grateful that whatever combination of luck, algorithm and swiping brought them to the same couch. He wants sausage on his half, she wants sausage on hers, and compatibility, after all, reveals itself in mysterious ways. The fact that the sausage was made and smoked that morning at allmine only strengthens the case.
In another house, the kids are finally asleep and the laptop comes back out. Tonight she is grateful for remote work, because it meant family dinner at allmine before finishing the day from home. There is one slice of pizza and a mercifully half-eaten cannoli left in the box, so she heats nothing, opens the laptop and enjoys ten minutes of silence before getting back to work. For once, nobody needs anything, and she gets the leftovers all to herself.
Three different evenings, each full in its own way. I think they all contain a version of the sam ething: a life being enjoyed as it is, making the most with whatever happens to be available.
This feels valuable especially right now. Gas is around six dollars a gallon, groceries cost more, and the holidays are approaching with their annual mixture of genuine joy and financial enthusiasm. Most of us are paying closer attention to money, which may be a good time to pay closer attention to value too.
We already have so much of the raw material for a good life. We have people who know our old stories and still want to hear them, someone beside us on the couch, ten minutes to ourselves at the end of a long day, a bottle waiting in the cupboard, a game of chess with a stranger, a swim, a good workout with your bestie.
A little imagination can stretch what we have surprisingly far, especially when we share it.
And when we do choose to spend money, I think the experience should give something back. I know that choosing dinner at allmine means trusting us with money you worked for and could have spent somewhere else, and I want us to earn that choice. Of course I want the food to be delicious and the wine worth discovering, but I also want the evening to feel generous: time with the person across from you, a familiar face at the next table, a conversation allowed to run long, the pleasure of being cared for and having somebody else do the dishes.
After four years, I can see what happens when enough of those evenings accumulate. Someone who arrived alone for wine class comes back knowing where to sit. Book club friendships continue long after we have moved on to another book, and regulars stop on their way out to catch up with another table. People who once walked through the door as strangers begin appearing in one another’s stories.
So perhaps the great luxury right now is deciding to live the days we have instead of waiting for easier, cheaper or more convenient ones. We live in Southern California, after all. The ocean is right there, September still feels like summer, dinner can happen outside, and our list of legitimate complaints is fairly short once you get past gas prices and, apparently, freedom of the press.
Use the good china on a Tuesday. Open the wine. Go watch the sunset. Stay for dessert. Call the friends and make the reservation, or tell them to come over and bring whatever is in their refrigerator. Spend carefully where you need to, extravagantly with your attention, and intentionally with your days. We get a finite number of them, and an ordinary one, lived well, is a pretty wonderful thing.
food that hugs you back.
Roxana and your allmine friends
