Le Select

It’s not the tense anticipation of a brutal mob assassination of Carmela, Tony, Meadow, and Tony Jr. in the New Jersey diner Holsteins that I remember.

It’s the life being lived in the vinyl booths, young couples canoodling over fries, boy scouts slurping milkshakes after the den meeting, the weariness of a workday washed away in a slurp of coffee from a cup plunked down on a chipped Formica counter. 

It’s the satisfaction on Tony’s face glancing from his menu as his faithful life partner walks in the door. It’s the awkward loving grasp and shake of his teenage son’s hand as he declares Holstein’s onion rings “the best in the state”.  It’s the slump of relief when his daughter Meadow walks through the threshold. Tony’s whole life is there, complete, and in its place. That is what I remember.

You don’t recall the pain.

As Tony Jr. says to his dad in this very moment, “Isn’t that what you said one time? Try to remember the times that were good.” If the Soprano family were felled by a mob hit after the fade to black, they literally wouldn’t remember it because their consciousness would be erased in the moment.

If the memory of pain is what truly carries on above all, there would be no second children, no second marriages, and no more wars. We would remember the horror only and be incentivized not to repeat the calamity.  But, in all those things, even war, there is beauty and joy, and that is generally, even without trying, what mostly persists in our memory.