sweet tomatoes

please come back

i brought my friend steven to try sweet tomatoes for the first time last week. sweet tomatoes was my childhood, and i wanted him to experience it, too.

unfortunately during covid, all of the sweet tomatoes closed… except one, in tucson, arizona, where we went.

walking in, it looked exactly as i’d remembered it. the salad bar, the trays, the clear blue and transparent cups. we bought stickers and went off to forage some food to bring back to our table.

as steven takes the first bite of the chicken noodle soup amidst the hum-drum of conversations, he goes:
“you know what this feels like, nancy? this feels like a third space.”

my mind got foggy for a second. i saw friends at sweet tomatoes, friends of friends, friends of parents of friends... happy, smiling, enjoying all the yummy soup. sweet tomatoes is where we’d gather, where we would celebrate, where we’d push our dining tables into one.

as i bit into the blueberry muffin, i remembered all the other times i had bitten into the same muffin, over 500 miles away and over 10 years ago for the very first time. it tasted exactly the same, and i was sitting at a chair that looked no different than the one when i first ate it.

at sweet tomatoes, all the worries in the world melted away. there was no where else like this.