Zingerman’s Bakery OK. I live in Columbus, Ohio not far from The Ohio State University. A Buckeye alumna, I may be expected by some to be less effusive about that “place up North,” but I must confess, I love Ann Arbor. I spent a couple of days there recently and enjoyed everything from the weather (7 to 10 degrees cooler than home) to the interesting shops and the plethora of ethnic eating places. Of course, the biggest draw is family, especially my daughter. Spending time exploring Ann Arbor is always most enjoyable with her.
She took me to favorite restaurants, starting off with an appetizer and wine at the Pacific Rim. The crab cakes were delicately delicious. So good, in fact, that we ordered a second round.
We walked to the next destination, Amadeus Cafe, but were disappointed to discover it was closed for dinner on Sunday. We turned and made our way to Cafe Felix and were not disappointed with a Julia Child’s favorite, beef bourguignon. Wine, salad, bread, and peach melba a la mode finished off the dinner.
The next day, we added a stop at Panera’s, curry dinner prepared by my sister, and finally before I left, an amazing lunch at foodies world famous Zingerman’s Delicatessen. I added an after lunch splurge of dark chocolate covered marzipan and a turtle on my way to the freeway.
Ann Arbor is also a great place to people watch and talk. The young man at Schakolad Chocolate Factory was eager to share why he and his wife moved to Ann Arbor from New York City.
“It is the people,” he said, “and no one is in a rush here. If you bump into someone on the sidewalk in New York, people say ‘Look out!’ or ‘Get outa my face!’ But not here,” he continued. “Here the argument is ‘Oh, excuse me. It was my fault!’ ‘No, no. It was MY fault.'” He laughed. So did I.
The bartender at the Pacific Rim, a foodie himself, overheard our interest in local foods and offered a tip for a future trip if we wanted a local food restaurant that rivaled his favorite on the West Coast.
Students, business people, and wanderers like me, fill the sidewalks and add to the ambiance. “Drivers here are crazy, though,” my daughter warned, putting at least part of the blame on no-fault insurance.
At Zingerman’s one cannot help but overhear table talk. The folks at the table behind us were the crew from the show “House Hunters,” in town for a shoot. Another table held a mother and two adult daughters, locals enjoying lunch under the shade of the big, blue umbrellas. Grandparents and grandchildren. Students. Business people. An unending variety of sizes, colors, shapes, languages, and conversations.
Today’s reading for mid-morning prayer fit the scene:
There is a variety of gifts but always the same Spirit; there are all sorts of service to be done, but always to the same Lord; working in all sorts of different ways in different people, it is the same God who is working in all of them. 1 Cor 12, 4-6
What delightful variety of people on this planet. What gifts each brings. In my little slice of place there were bakers and chocolatiers, artists and musicians, archaeologists and writers, students and professors. Friends and strangers. People who live together and people who will likely never see one another again.
What a glorious conglomeration. “An embarrassment of riches,” I said to my daughter, still playing with terms of venery started on the evening of “An Explosion of Turkeys.”
I couldn’t help but think of Thomas Merton’s famous theophany at Fourth and Walnut in Louisville, Kentucky recounted in “Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander:”
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers… And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
Speak Your Mind