Sunday Breakfasts with My Mother

Every Sunday I have breakfast at Nate ’n Al’s delicatessen in Beverly Hills with my mother. Sunday breakfasts with her have become a tradition for me and for my younger daughters, both of whom live in Los Angeles. My mom—Grandmother Leah to my children—is 95 and came to live with me three years ago; the last time we lived under the same roof before that was 50 years ago, when I was in college.

I’m not sure how the tradition got started, but we’ve been going to Nate ’n Al’s for Sunday breakfast for at least 30 years, and it’s one of the ways that members of our family get together and, equally important, it’s one of the last links that keep my mother connected to her old way of life.

Although she is in good shape for 95, my mother is no longer able to live an independent life, as she gave up driving long ago and hasn’t been able to go out by herself for the last five years.She has also outlived all of her old friends and acquaintances.

Nate ’n Al’s is one of the last places on the planet where she is still known, still a “made person.”It’s her “Cheers,” a place where everybody knows her name.The rest of the world doesn’t interact with her nor does she interact with it. She loves mail but doesn’t get any. She isn’t computer friendly, so email and the Internet aren’t in her universe. It’s an event when she receives her annual bill from the Automobile Club. Though she hasn’t driven in 15 years, I keep her membership because it’s one of her last affiliations.

We just sold her ten-year-old car with 15,000 miles on it last week because no one uses it. She went into a funk, which reminded me of a story I was told about a 70-year-old man who went into a similar funk when his father died, even though for 20 years before that his father hadn’t been able to recognize his son due to Alzheimer’s. Although the son had lost his experience of having a father 20 years earlier, it wasn’t until his father actually died that the son felt like an orphan and became depressed. That’s the way it must have been for my mom when, even though she hadn’t been able to drive for over a decade, she knew that her car was actually gone for good.

Nate ’n Al’s delicatessen opened in 1945, and by the time I was a young man it was already a Los Angeles institution.It has a lot of very loyal customers and the waitresses have worked there so long that they have become like an extended family for all the regulars.My mother talks to them, and they are warm to her, always calling her “Mrs.Fogel” and promptly filling her requests for another cup of coffee or to make sure her lox and eggs are cooked the way she likes them and that she has chicken noodle soup and kugel(noodle pudding) to take home with her.Over breakfast, I ask my mother questions, and she is proud to answer them—proud because, at her age, she can answer them, proud to remember details about times in her life that I ask her about or the latest book she is reading.She is a great reader.

The thing that I and my mother appreciate most about our breakfasts is that either of my daughters or both of them join us. One of my daughters sits next to my mother and the other sits next to me, and as we eat we chat as we did when the girls were growing up, and my mother was younger, living on her own as a fully independent woman.When my daughter and her son are visiting Los Angeles, they join us, and at times my son has joined us, too.

I value having these Sunday breakfasts with my mother and my children and sometimes wonder if the kids will continue to go with me when my mother is a “blessed memory.”I hope they do,as I crave the connection, and for me that is what family is about:just showing up and being with each other and sharing who we are and that we care.