We don�t get to choose what our kids decide is theirs.
We don�t decide where Home is.
Home is where they choose to laugh and cry and dream.

The first decade of my life was spent in the caf� my father owned. The second decade I experienced every emotion possible about not being able to walk in the door anymore. I didn�t understand until the paperwork was all said and done that the caf� wasn�t mine. That it didn�t belong to me. All I had known up to that point was that it was the place of laughter and food and family. My concept of ownership was shattered when I was told there would be no more days of walking over there after school to eat cookies and count money, help clean and roll up the cinnamon rolls for the week. All I understood was that there was an exchange between my father and some woman for my home and my family. To a child, possession is the law, not 9/10ths of it.

Before I was 8 I had cracked more eggs than I could fathom existing. Every time that was my task, I bet with the cook that it wouldn�t fit in the container he gave me. An hour later, fingers numb from cold eggs, the yolks would be bobbing around in whites that lapped at the rim, but never surpassed it. It never occurred to me that he gave me the same container and the same number of eggs every time and therefore knew that it wouldn�t be too many. All I knew was I was helping make breakfast for family. That was the most important thing in the world. Make a difference in the lives of everyone that walked through the door, just with that one meal. That one glass of fresh squeezed orange juice, the scones placed on the table, the fruit and cheese plates that were done up and set down for kids before they got settled in their chair, all these moments made a difference. How does someone make a difference if they aren�t allowed to crack gallons of eggs anymore? If they aren�t allowed to use a squiggly blade to cut the strips of dough apart to make cinnamon rolls so that they are that more special for each person that orders one? If they don�t get to spend their summer breaks squeezing oranges so that everyone that wants juice can have some? What happens to a child�s identity if the only life they know is ripped from them and no one hears their heart breaking?

Zell�s caf� is my childhood. Nothing else really mattered in day to day living. Those walls were the fortress to my castle, the ship I sailed on, every customer a passenger traveling the journey of life, spending an hour, a cup of coffee, a dream with the world that existed within our doors. There I learned that it doesn�t matter who you are or where you come from, just so long as you are willing to work hard. That no hands were unwelcome, no matter the color, the mannerism, the strength, the age or the size. There, everyone was responsible. Everyone was held capable until they proved otherwise. Play time was work and work was play. Life just was.

When I ran away from the house I grew up in when I was 13, I went and sat on the steps of that building (Zell�s?). It was night and I probably shouldn�t have been out on my own. I went from the only house I knew to the only home I could remember. The door was locked, and I had no key. On the steps to the office I sat and cried, silent and violent tears, my back pressed against the door to the room my grandfather held my brother and I when we were babies while our parents worked. I cried because I had no home and I no longer knew what family was. I cried because the day my father told me �no more caf� was the day my childhood ended. I cried because death is hard to grasp, harder still when there seems to be the appearance of a pulse despite the lifeless shell.

I hated the woman we sold the caf� to. I hated that she stopped all the baking and I hated that I couldn�t go in there anymore. I hated her because my father did and I would not give up my allegiance to him even though I felt he gave none in return. But I wrote to her that night. On a slip of paper I found in my pockets, with a pen that was almost chewed to shreds, I wrote her the most honest letter I had ever written.

�Please, I grew up here, this is my home. I can�t come back. But please, please take care of it for me. This is my world. Please don�t let it fall.�

Gently I put it through the mail slot. A slip of paper, perhaps found and read, perhaps discarded as trash. I did not sign it, did not know my name or my identity. Only my tears staining the paper and my smeared fingerprints on the door could speak of my presence there.

A decade later, I sit with the man that took away my home in a place that looks familiar but holds no certainty for me. I eat the scones that they bring me, even though I�ve always hated scones. We discuss the menu, what we would trust and not trust and my father�s girlfriend comments on how difficult we are going out to breakfast. I tell her that we were spoiled, have high standards, had to. My father becomes a celebrity in this little world that used to seem so big as the new owner comes out and shakes his hand. I comment that I could buy a shirt with his name on it and remember the artwork that we always had up from the elementary school I attended. I choke down food and wonder if I feel sick to my stomach because of the pain or because the last owner didn�t believe in cleaning and it passed hands two weeks ago.

I leave. Not looking any further than the front room, the life of which seems to be dying coals. Our waiter had a nice smile. I tell my brother that I was sad having been back to our childhood, but that the food was worth paying for, despite my belief that I could have made better. It�s true. I�m a snob when it comes to breakfast food. I am ok with that because it is my last reminder of my history.