The Original Original Pizza Cookery

In those days, we used any excuse to stop by The Pizza Cookery. Friends visiting from out of town? Let’s take them to The Pizza Cookery. Need something from Fry’s? Let’s stop by the Pizza Cookery. Driving through The Valley for any reason at all? Let’s stop by The Pizza Cookery.

The Original Pizza Cookery, back then, was a vibe. Tucked into the corner of a shitty strip mall on Topanga Canyon Blvd., it was exactly what you would expect when you walked in the door. Sawddust sprinkled on the floor, Christmas lights strung around every inch of the walls, and complimentary peanuts at your table. 

The pizza wasn’t the best I’ve ever had, but the complimentary rolls were to die for, the quantity of food was unrivaled, and the atmosphere was unlike anyplace else. Even the Northwoods Inn – the only other restaurant I’m aware of with sawdust on the floor – couldn’t compare to the vibe that was The Original Pizza Cookery. The anticipation of going to The Original Pizza Cookery back then was palpable.

Have A Baby They Said…

Sadly, we didn’t get to go to The Original Pizza Cookery that day. At the appointment, the doctor dropped a bomb on us, “We’re going to have a baby today,” he said. I’m sorry. What? I’m afraid there’s been some sort of misunderstanding. We’re here for a checkup, not to have a baby. The baby isn’t due for another couple of weeks, not to mention the fact that we have plans for lunch!. Our plans, however, were not to be. 

We were ushered upstairs, where Bonnie was put into a hospital gown, needles and tubes were shoved into her skin, and we were left to wait in a severely decorated room with a TV mounted to the wall that only played public service announcements about raising children. One of them was a warning about the dangers of shaking a baby. It was so silly and melodramatic that any message would surely be lost in its absurdity, but it had exactly the opposite effect. To this day, we still quote the deep, booming voice warning us to “Never shake a baby.”

We spent eighteen-odd hours in that room, listening to that TV. I’m not sure what the harm would have been in letting us duck out for an hour to grab a bite to eat before settling into that drab little room until the sun came up the next day. We really began to regret having skipped breakfast that morning. Bonnie especially. She hadn’t eaten since the night before, and she wouldn’t get to eat again for three days. 

The New Original Pizza Cookery

We would eventually eat at The Pizza Cookery again and with our children. I don’t, however, remember the last time I ate at the Woodland Hills location. I hadn’t been in years, though, when it moved to the Thousand Oaks Inn in Thousand Oaks. It seemed out of place there. The Thousand Oaks Inn had always had a coffee shop called Dupar’s on the first floor, next to the lobby. A coffee shop is more appropriate for a hotel than a pizzeria. Coffee shops serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and while I understand that many people enjoy cold pizza for breakfast, I don’t think anyone is willing to pay for it at a hotel. 

Nevertheless, overcome by hunger and nostalgia, I couldn’t resist popping in for lunch as I passed by. I walked into the main entrance, though there was nothing to indicate that it was the main entrance. The single, unmarked, non-descript, darkly tinted glass door looked more like the side entrance to the bowling alley that used to be next door than the main entrance to a reputable and shockingly expensive restaurant.

The little door opened up like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory to a spacious but poorly utilized foyer. There was a podium to the left that held menus, so I knew I was in the right spot. An assortment of shit cluttered the wall to my right. I wasn’t sure if it was tat for sale or tchotchkes for ambiance, which tells you that neither was working. Straight ahead, a young, average-looking blonde woman and an older man were having a discussion about Jesus. I stood patiently if not awkwardly, waiting for someone to acknowledge my presence. 

Will Customer Service Ever Recover From COVID?

Eventually, after what I felt was an inappropriately long time to have to wait during an obviously slow period in the day, the blonde girl approached me and asked in an almost offensively patronizing tone if there was something that she could do for me today. Taken aback that my purpose for being there wasn’t blatantly obvious, I was momentarily dumbstruck. I stuttered and stammered, waving my arms in a way that she correctly interpreted as “I want a fucking table.” She said, “Oh. Dining in today?” As though everyone she encounters at that little podium has a different agenda. Then, she pulled a menu out of the podium and led me to the first table in a series of five comically tall booths that ran the length of the front of the restaurant. 

The booth sat against the wall, so it was very dark and sad. The hostess was either adept at reading people’s faces and body language or she frequently had customers requesting to be seated somewhere other than the dungeon because, without me saying a word, she asked if I would rather have a table by a window. Of course, I didn’t want to sit alone in the dark. I wanted to be able to look out the window while I waited for my lunch. She led me past the next table, where a father and daughter were already seated, and sat me at the table on the other side of them, next to a window.

Who Was This Booth Made For?

I laughed when I saw the window. The majority of it was frosted, and what little of the glass wasn’t frosted had hearts painted on it. Little did it matter because the window faced a stone wall ten feet away, so there was nothing to look at anyway. Perhaps that’s why the window was frosted in the first place. I climbed up onto the booth as the hostess laid my menu on the table. As she was walking away, she said that she would get me some rolls. I quickly replied, “No rolls.” She seemed a bit surprised but didn’t say anything more. She just returned to her bible study. 

The Original Pizza Cookery At The Top Of Jack’s Bean Stalk

I didn’t pick up my menu straight away because I was distracted by the height of the booth. It was so tall that my feet didn’t come anywhere near touching the floor. I’m 5’11’ with a 32” inseam, and my feet didn’t even reach the bar around the base of the table. As the edge of the booth cut into the back of my thighs, cutting off circulation, I couldn’t help but wonder who exactly these booths were made for. Did they find some 7’ tall carpenter on Craigslist to build these things? I cannot overstate how uncomfortable the booth was. My legs were all pins and needles when I finally left the restaurant. I’m happy to report, though, that since my visit, they have lowered the booths and tables to a human height.

The Gluten-Free Game Is Strong At The Original Pizza Cookery

I was so preoccupied with the absurdity of everything about this table that I completely forgot to look at the menu before my server came by to take my order. I already knew that all I wanted was a salad – The Original Pizza Cookery is sort of known for their generously sized salads – so it was just a matter of skimming the salad selection for the one that I wanted. Still, I wish I had taken the time to peruse the menu because then I would have found the gluten-free section, which I only found later on their website.

They have the largest selection of gluten-free options of any restaurant I’ve ever been to. I wouldn’t count on all of their offerings to be 100% gluten-free, though. For example, they have fries on their gluten-free menu but breaded mushrooms and mozzarella sticks on their regular menu, so the chance for cross-contamination is high. I was, however, impressed that they have two different sizes of gluten-free pizza, something I’ve never seen before. I ordered the Italian house Salad with blue cheese dressing and confirmed with her that it didn’t come with croutons. Before walking away, she confirmed that I didn’t want rolls, and I again said that I didn’t.

Italian and Gluten-Free Aren’t So Compatible

I seldom feel the need to explain to anyone that I can’t tolerate gluten, but I have learned that it’s best to make sure it stays out of my food. One day last week, I was eating lunch at Presto Pasta, and I forgot to ask if the salad came with croutons and, consequently, it arrived at my table covered with croutons. I picked them off, but the cucumbers, tomatoes, and carrots also had crumbs stuck to them. So, I picked off all of the visibly contaminated components and placed them on a napkin next to my plate. An employee came by later to check on me and clear my dirty dishes, and I saw her check out the random pile of vegetables, croutons and the slice of bread accumulated on the table with an inquisitive look on her face.

I don’t expect people to read my mind, but if I were in their shoes, I like to think that I could and would pick up on little clues, make deductions, and extrapolate the information before me. If a man were to order his chicken piccata with the only gluten-free pasta on the menu, for example, I would assume that it wasn’t a preference but a dietary restriction because nobody prefers anything to be gluten-free. So, I would confirm with him that he has an allergy, and then I would be sure to send out his salad without croutons and his entree without a giant slab of stale garlic bread sitting right on top of his gluten-free pasta. But, hey, that’s just me.

We Just Lived Through A Pandemic, People!

Before she left me, the waitress took my drink order. I asked for a Pellegrino, and she asked if I wanted lime with it, which impressed me because rarely does anyone think to ask that, let alone proactively bring limes out with the drink. My impression turned to disgust when she set my glass down on the table by the rim. Why don’t you just stir the lime in my water with your fingers while you’re at it? She didn’t only carry my glass that way, either. I saw her place other glasses on other tables that way, too.

Imagine what she’s spreading from glass to glass by handling the rim of the glass that way. Someone has a cold sore; she picks up their glass by the rim to refill it, returns it to the table, picks up a glass from the next table by the rim, refills it, returns it, and before her shift ends, everyone in the place has herpes. Of course, I realize I’m in the minority of people who disdain straws and choose to drink from a glass like a proper adult, but it doesn’t make the way she handles glasses any less gross. I even saw her set down a mug by the rim. A mug! It had a fucking handle for fucks sake!

While I waited for my salad to arrive – which, by the way, took significantly longer than I felt it should have, considering it was just one whole head of lettuce, a handful of mozzarella, half a can of garbanzo beans, and one slice of nasty looking very unripe tomato –  I took in the scene that is the new and improved yet, somehow, Original Pizza Cookery.

Pizza Shouldn’t Be Political

The word that came to mind as I looked around the dining room was WASPY. Perhaps it was the Jesus talk when I walked in the door that tinted my perspective or that everyone in the joint was white and conservative. Whatever it was, I simultaneously felt at home and behind enemy lines. Later that night, Bonnie reminded me that during the lockdown, the owner of The Original Pizza Cookery, refused to shut down. Their disregard for public safety would explain the server’s filthy fingers all over the rim of my glass.

The More Things Change…

There were two tables off to my left, occupied by old ladies who could have easily been the same old ladies who sat in coffee shops and restaurants in Thousand Oaks when I was a kid. There’s something about old ladies in Thousand Oaks that I’ve never seen anywhere else. They share the aesthetic that comes with aging comfortably in relative affluence. They all look like they walked out of a brochure for an assisted living community, and they always have. For all I know, these were the same old ladies eating lunch here thirty years ago when this was Dupar’s. Someone periodically comes out of the back and updates their clothes like the animatronic characters at Disneyland.

Daddy Daughter Day

Since there was nothing particularly interesting going on in the dining room, and since they were sitting directly in front of me, I found myself drawn into the conversation between the father and daughter seated at the next table. The father was sitting with his back to me. He was probably in his early fifties, and what remained of his hair was gray, almost white. He had the familiar horseshoe of male pattern baldness, but his was fine stubble that had grown back since his last shave two or three days earlier.

When I was a kid, guys with the horseshoe hairline carried on like they had a full head of hair. They didn’t shave it. They grew it out like they did when they had hair. It was never a flattering look, but when more than half of the men you know all look that way, you only have the men blessed with a full head of hair to compare yourself with. Then Bruce Willis went bald and started shaving his head, and balding men everywhere followed suit. Even men with odd-shaped heads looked better without the weird furry ring, which, before long, became a novelty of old pictures and home movies, like wood paneling and bell bottoms. 

He would have looked like a nerdy software engineer if he grew his hair out. Not the young hipster software engineers of today’s Silicon Valley but the kind with Coke bottle glasses and pocket protectors that created the industry those young nerds occupy today. The daughter was pretty but in a forced, artificial way. Beauty didn’t seem to come naturally to her, but she was at an age and socioeconomic level that afforded her access to the progress of the feminine beauty industry.

Hot Tea At The Pizza Cookery

She explained to her dad that her man was traveling to Chicago for business. I didn’t catch if they were married or just living in sin. The way she spoke about him, though, it didn’t sound like she was married to the love of her life. It sounded more like a legal partnership or a marriage of convenience. He is an investor, she explained, with a firm based in Chicago and has found that showing up to certain events in person has benefits of some sort or another. It sounded to me like she was making excuses for him and that she didn’t really believe them herself.

The Service Begins To Slip

As I finished my lunch, I began to get impatient. My server had fucked off somewhere after bringing me my salad and never came back to check on me. I would have liked another Pellegrino, but now that I was done eating, I just wanted my check. I saw her stopping by every other table but mine. She finally came by my table and asked me if I wanted anything else. I told her I just wanted the check, and she said she would be right back with it. But she wasn’t right back with it. She went back to waiting on every other table in the place. 

While I was waiting, the conversation between father and daughter turned to grandchildren. It seems there was trouble with the ol’ baby makin’ factory. A year ago, they thought that they would be pregnant by now, but it’s just not happening for them. She and her man were checked out, and they’re both working properly. I got the sense that her man was more disappointed that they weren’t pregnant than she was. Even her dad seemed to be a little more disappointed than her. It sounded like she was more disappointed about letting him down than disappointed that she wasn’t pregnant. 

It surprised me to hear that she was trying to have a baby because the way she was talking about what her man does for a living sounded more like first-date recap information than I-share-a house-with-a-man-who-I’m-also-allowing-to-drop-loads-in-me information. I also thought it was strange that she was sharing so much personal information with her dad. They must be really close. I wonder what it’s like to be that close to a parent. 

I Live Here Now

My waitress finally brought my check, but I wasn’t quick enough with my card. She just dropped the tray and ran. I feared it would be another twenty minutes before she came back to pick it up again and who knows how long before she brought it back. Pride of The Original Pizza Cookery she was. I was beginning to fear that this booth was my new home, and I was never again going to know the feeling of my feet touching the floor. Little difference it would make. With the booth cutting off circulation to my legs I wouldn’t be able to feel my feet before long anyway.

This Woman Will Give Birth Before I’m Able To Leave

Meanwhile, the daughter started talking about how difficult it had been to get pregnant. “There’s a 10% chance every month,” she lamented, as though the odds of getting pregnant are so long that it’s a miracle anyone has managed it thus far. I realize that it’s harder for some people to conceive than others, but there are so many millions of people who have a harder time avoiding conception that blaming your struggle to get pregnant on “the odds” seems a bit self-absorbed. It’s like when Bonnie complains that it’s too hot at 75º or too cold at 73º, and I remind her that it’s not too hot or cold; you’re too hot or cold. 

My waitress came right back with the check which was equally surprising and welcomed as the restaurant was starting to get busy, so I was glad to be on my way. As I was signing the receipt, I heard the daughter say, “It would just be nice for me to be the first not to have any medical intervention.” Apparently, getting pregnant doesn’t come easily for anyone in her family. Ironic, I thought, as I walked past her on my way to the door, my feet tingling with each step. Twenty-two years earlier, without even trying, Bonnie and I conceived our first son just upstairs, in this very hotel that is now home to The Original Pizza Cookery. What are the odds?

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I brought Bonnie along with me that night. While we were setting up, the nurses who were throwing the party came up to talk to me. I continued working while we talked and as I was setting up my lights my lighting stand fell forward and smacked one of the ladies in the face. It busted her nose and covered her face in blood.

To say that it was a stressful night from that point would be an understatement. The image of the woman’s face I had broken monopolized my thoughts. But that triviality would soon be forgotten as I was about to receive monumentally life-changing news.

A Mysterious Phone Call

Towards the end of the party, Bonnie got a call from her mother. It was a rather cryptic message that didn’t make a great deal of sense at first. She called her back to get more details. It seemed a woman had called Bonnie’s mom looking for me. She wanted to know if I had been adopted in 1978 and claimed that she might be my aunt. Back in January Bonnie had asked me if I wanted to find my biological family and I said I would someday. So for the next 8 months, she took to the internet to try to find them.

Finding Your Birth Family Back Then Was A Lot More Work Than Throwing a Pic Up on Facebook

These days if you were adopted and you want to find your birth mom you just put your information on a sign, take a picture with it, put it on Facebook, and let the internet do all the work. But even that’s outdated now since you can just take a DNA test and find everyone in the country who’s related to you whether you knew it or not. But back then you had to enter the information you had onto these adoption websites. If you entered your info and your family entered their info then eventually you might find each other. It only worked, though, if you were both looking for each other. For 8 months Bonnie entered the very limited information we had on these sites.

What We Knew About My Adoption

What we knew about my birth parents came from the adoption paperwork my adoptive parents had. We had my hospital paperwork that didn’t offer a lot of clues but it did have a little information about my birth parents; a brief medical history for each of them and some family medical history. There were also some very unhelpful clues that led nowhere.

I wasn’t adopted right away. For the first three months of my life, I was in foster care and my foster family named me. It wasn’t my legal name just something to call me. This name was on all of the medical paperwork from my first three months of life. It didn’t contain any clues but it was the bulk of the information we had. They call it a closed adoption for a reason.

Fortunately, there were also some clues in a pair of letters my birth parents wrote to me. They put them in a bible with instructions that I should receive it when I turned 18. In my birth mom’s letter, she mentioned her and my birth father’s ages which confirmed the ages in the paperwork from the hospital (although they had my birth mom’s birth-month wrong.) My birth father signed his letter with his first name which was the only real personal clue we had about who these people were.

The Other Side of This Adoption Story

So for 8 months she searched for adoption websites and entered this information on each one. There were a few times we thought we might have a match but then there was always a glaring discrepancy that kept us moving on.

Then, unbeknownst to us, on Wednesday, August 16, 2000, my 22nd birthday and just three days before the mysterious phone call, my aunt called my birth mom for my birthday. My aunt had been offering to look for me for some time. Until this point, my birth mom was reluctant. She thought, quite accurately, that when I grew up and got married my wife would press me to start looking.

But this year, she acquiesced and my aunt, using some sort of background check software that she had purchased, began to look using the limited information that my birth parents had. And so because Bonnie had spent 8 months logging my information into dozens of adoption websites it made it very easy for my aunt to find it all in just 3 days! (And of course, she likes to take the credit for finding me so fast .)

So Many Questions

Through some less than ethical means my aunt found Bonnie’s mom’s home phone number. Bonnie’s brother also named Richard, led to my aunts confusion about my relationship to my future mother in-law. Really, it was just dumb luck that she found the number at all.

She called the number and left a message. When Bonnie’s mom heard the message she called Bonnie. Bonnie told her mom to call this mysterious woman back and get some more information which she did and relayed to Bonnie.

After we had packed up the truck and were driving home I was asking Bonnie for details. She had already told me everything that her mom had told her but I kept asking the same questions over and over again hoping for some new information. She told told me my birth parents married 3 years after I was born. A year later they had a daughter.

“I have a little sister?!” I exclaimed. We had just started up the Conejo grade from Camarillo and I remember telling Bonnie that I had always wanted a little sister. It was overwhelming. I couldn’t believe that my birth family was still a family. It had never occurred to me that they were still together. I just assumed that any other siblings I had would be half-siblings.

My aunt gave left the number for my birth parents and said to call anytime. Being that it was midnight before I got home I didn’t call. I kind of wanted to but I also didn’t both out of nerves and exhaustion. I had a very stressful and emotional day and my adoption story had taken 22 years to get this far so what was a few more hours? So I waited until the morning.

Sunday Morning

I have never been one to pick up the phone and call someone. Since I was a teenager I have always felt like the person on the other end couldn’t wait to get off the phone with me. I didn’t like calling friends because I didn’t want to be a bother. Calling girls was traumatic. Calling a complete stranger 2 states away who may or may not have given me up for adoption was almost too much to bear. But Bonnie was there supporting and encouraging me to make the call so I did.

We talked for an hour or 2 I think and I don’t remember much of what was said. Later that evening we met my aunt and her family at The Olive Garden. They lived 40 mins away my whole life! About a month later my birth mom flew down and my sister and 2 friends drove down as soon as our parents told her the news.

Not a Normal Adoption Story

That was all 20 years ago as I write this. These past 20 years have been full of birthdays, Thanksgivings, weddings, births, and all of the other things that go along with being a family. It feels good to be welcomed back into the fold – it’s been effortless; the way things work when they’re right. It hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows though. There has been plenty of pain as well. Hearing stories of things that I missed out on; feeling like an interloper at times in not just 1 but now 2 families. But still, the goodness of it all far outweighs the bad. Questions have been answered and the mystery of the past has been solved allowing focus to be shifted to the future. There was a hole that is finally closing up albeit slowly.

I am happy with the way my adoption story unfolded but I have recently learned that mine is an unusual one. Most adoptions don’t end up like this. The adoptee holds great resentment and bitterness towards their birth parents. Or, when the adoptee finally finds their birth parents they reject him a second time. There are so many stories without happy endings that I feel blessed to be a rare but fortunate exception.

So Is This the End of My Adoption Story?

Realizing that this week would mark the 20th anniversary of our reunion as well as my birth parents 40th wedding anniversary and also my 42 birthday we had made plans to do a big, epic family trip someplace but then the world fell into a global pandemic and put the kibosh on our plans. I haven’t seen any of them since January.

My sister and her family had been coming to visit once-a-month for the previous 6 months and my birth parents every other month up until that point. It’s been hard these past 8 months not being able to get together. I hope that this pandemic will calm down soon we’ll all be able to get together but I rather fear it’s only going to get worse before next year. But whatever happens in the short term I look forward to another 20 years with my new old family and I’m grateful to have had almost as much time with them, thus far, as we were apart. So, no, this is not the end of my adoption story, not by a long shot.

The post My Adoption Story Is Unusual – Reunited After 22 Years appeared first on RetroActiveLifestyle.

The journey begins

I take my first step alone

The path ahead un…

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