By Melinda Trujillo
Winter 2016 Kaplan Award Winner
I never was any good at those games from children’s birthday parties- you know, the ones where they blindfold you and spin you around and ask you to pin the tail on the donkey- or to swing at those piñatas full of prizes and candy. How can anyone be good at them? You’re blindfolded and they keep moving the darn piñata around. But that day, as I walked out of Vios Café through the adjoining bookstore and stepped out into the Seattle sunshine I felt like a little kid who’d just burst open the mother of all piñatas. As I waited for my Uber back to my apartment I imagined jolly ranchers, sweet tarts, and small colored squares of tissue paper raining down on me like confetti- my friends and family clapping and cheering in excitement.
Just two days before, my boss at the Greek restaurant where I was a waitress had informed me that he had hired too many people and my hours were going to get cut. He suggested I might want to start looking for a second job, so I began a casual and unenthusiastic search on craigslist, sifting through the mass amounts of jobs I was underqualified and overqualified for, looking mostly at serving positions. I spent about an hour emailing a few places my resume and expressing my interest in setting up an interview, and within an hour my phone rang. “Hi, is this Melinda?” “This is she.” I said, trying to sound as hirable as possible. “Hi, this is Nina from Vios Café at Third Place in Ravenna. I received your email about your interest in the server position. Are you available for an interview tomorrow at 12:30?”
As I approached the podium at the front of the café a girl whose eyes I couldn’t quite see because of the light reflecting off her glasses walked over with a menu and a glass of water, “Hi, just one today?” she asked with a smile. Her arm already extended outward and her body angled to guide me toward a small table just a few feet away at the front of the café. “I’m actually here to interview with Nina- for the server position? Melinda Trujillo.” “Oh, perfect, I’ll let her know you’re here!”
Nina had dark brown hair pulled back into a thick ponytail and wore a deep purple scarf. Her eyeliner was sharp and perfectly winged. She began by asking me all the standard interview questions: transportation, experience, availability, et cetera. As I watched the end of her pen move in small circles in the air I wondered what she was writing and hoped I was answering adequately. After a few more minutes passed she finally put her pen down and said “So let me tell you a little bit about Vios.” As Nina spoke I felt myself falling in love with the café and its story. I couldn’t wait to get home and start writing about this wonderfully homey place that Nina referred to as “the waterhole of Ravenna”. It was a beautiful and inspirational story and she told it so well.
“Thomas and his wife had opened up their first restaurant on Capitol Hill, but shortly after they had their first baby his wife passed away unexpectedly, -cancer, I think it was,” she said. Thomas Soukakos sold his restaurant to mourn his wife and focus on being a father to their ten-month-old son, Alexander, whom he was left to raise alone. A few years later Thomas decided he wanted to open up a new restaurant, and the entire community came together in a show of support; investing in his concept for a family-friendly but also high quality dining experience. “He named it Vios, which means life in Greek. The first one was on 3rd and Aloha. That was when Vios was really born. He now has three successful restaurants all based on the same concept as the first.”
I saw the makings of a fabulous narrative journalistic piece for one of my upcoming assignments. I felt like an archaeologist who’d unintentionally uncovered a rare and precious artifact. The story was so moving and so inspiring- a man loses his wife, a baby its mother, and the whole family their restaurant- but the community rushes in with love, support and even financial assistance to help Thomas Soukakos get a second chance at his and his wife’s dream. I excitedly thought about how I would describe the café’s comfortable warmth and capture its “soul”. I thought this was just the kind of story people should hear- the kind of story that both breaks and melts your heart at the same time, lets you feel a brief sadness but is ultimately healing, the kind of story that resuscitates your faith in humanity and makes people feel thankful and inspired. I had effortlessly pinned the tail on the donkey.
The next day, back at my first serving job, I was excited to tell my boss Denny all about the unbelievable luck I’d had successfully landing a new job and simultaneously finding a story for my assignment. I smiled as I spoke, envisioning myself getting my paper handed back to me with a smiley face and a stellar grade on top- maybe even a note saying I had a good shot at a Kaplan Award. But as he listened his expression went from a smile to something else that I can only describe as uncertainty or perhaps concern. “Wait, where did you say?” he asked.
When I got home that night I felt sad. Denny had recognized my story because it was one he had heard too, in 2001, but in a slightly different version than the one I had been told. I opened my laptop and searched “Thomas Soukakos” and there it was, the second article down, from January 15th, 2003. “Severe post partum depression leaves them without wife and mother” I skimmed the story in disbelief until I found it, “Carol Soukakos hanged herself from a basement water pipe.” I forced myself to read the details. My ‘cute’ story vanished. A much different story was revealed to me- a story about a woman with postpartum depression, who hung herself with electrical wiring in her basement, while her ten-month-old baby slept in the car.
I could understand why everyone else I talked to in the café had said something like “but then his wife got sick” or “but then his wife passed away unexpectedly”, but what puzzled me was Nina’s comment: “-Cancer I think”. I had told her I was doing an article on the restaurant. Did she know the story wouldn’t be as ‘cute’ if I knew the whole truth? Or had she somehow really not known? I sat at my desk for a long time wondering what the story meant to me now. It wasn’t exactly the story I’d had in mind but I wanted to hang on to it. Even though I now felt I had pinned the donkey’s tail in its mouth, I realized that that happens sometimes. Life will spin you around and ask you to swing at a moving target, and sometimes you’re going to be way off. In the same way that the tail doesn’t always land where it’s supposed to, not all stories in life are going to be comfortable and cute. Some stories will disturb us but it doesn’t make them any less worthwhile. Not every swing we take will burst the piñata, but we can’t just skip the party.