Bring Back The Sauce, Olive Garden!

It didn’t hit me when she left home to begin her undergraduate studies. It wasn’t when she started raiding my closet for my clothes from Ann Taylor. It didn’t strike us as a sadhappy thing when she insisted on doing her own taxes, or cooking. I smiled fondly, indulgently, when she alternately yelled at me and tried to bribe me with puppy perks to drink more water, and to exercise more.

All these events, all these milestones and rites of passage had a move forward quality to them and I didn’t even think of them as the loss of her childhood. Sure, every new thing she did, every new experience she had, was a reminder that a. she was becoming an independent adult, and b. I was getting old.

But two days ago, she called bawling. And laughing. Yes, laughing in between sobs of complete heartbreak. I panicked. Kashew has had some health issues, and I thought something had happened to him. (Yes, my first thought is always Kashew now, much to her annoyance). I think she’s actually jealous of the puppy – her own puppy, and the love and attention he gets from me.

But no, it wasn’t Kashew, thank god. (I know she’s rolling her eyes at this). Instead, what I got out of her between her laughter and sobs was that Olive Garden has stopped carrying FOREVER the sundried tomato sauce, in all the restaurants. She went on about how unfair it was, why oh why they had to discontinue the one last thing that still remained from her CHILDHOOD.

Ah. That’s when it hit me, clueless me, who was laughing because I know how attached she is to Muncie’s Pizza King, the crazy pizza place that is a local landmark with a cult following, where you can “ring the king” from your table to order your pizza, the queso sauce from Puerto Vallarta, and the breadsticks from Fazzoli’s Real Italian!! Her cousin once gave her a book of Queso for Christmas. That’s how obsessed she is with it.

No. It wasn’t just an obsession. Olive Garden was the last remaining thread to her childhood. OG carried the sauce that reminded her of her birthdays when she was growing up. It was the second most favorite birthday place, the first being Don Pablos, the Mexican restaurant chain.

Actually the birthday sequence was playtime-at-Discovery Zone-followed by-a-trip-to-Barnes-and-Nobles-followed-by-dinner-at-Don-Pablos for both my children’s birthdays, which we did for several years, until Don Pablos closed, sadly, and then it was Olive Garden.

I was stunned. I was happy that she had such fond memories of her birthdays. I was sad that it was gone. I told her she still has the memories. To which she replied Nick, her boyfriend, said exactly the same thing. Nick also asked her, alarmed, if she usually cried over sauce like that, Nick who has known her for two years, and has never seen anything like it.

This incident, while it saddened me, reminded me of the power of good childhood memories! It’s not the trips to Hawaii. It’s in the simplest of acts—that of families spending time together.

Olive Garden, if you’re reading this, please bring back your sundried tomato sauce, my girl needs it!

She’ll probably kill me for posting this, but we didn’t take many photos those days and this was one of the last ones at Don Pablos!