ISABELLA
27 February 2003
 Remember this symbol. I have
been told it is going to become one of the most recognizeable symbols in the area. You
heard it here first.
This is Isabella, soon to be the logo for a new restaurant about to
open in Sacramento.
We had call around 7 p.m. last night. I was sitting there trying to decide what there was
in the fridge that I could whip up for dinner. It had been a stressful day and I really
didn't feel like cooking dinner. The kitchen was a disaster anyway. I knew that I would
probably have to thaw a couple of chicken breasts and I just wasn't feeling inventive with
chicken breasts at the moment.
The call was from our Mexican daughter, Marie, who lived with us for her senior year in
high school, in 1988. She was giving a tour of Davis to her mother, who was
visiting from Mexico and invited us to meet them downtown for dinner.
The circumstances surrounding Marie's coming to us were pretty
weird. We had gone to a show at the theatre and sitting in front of us were some friends
who had just returned form Mexico. David is a physician who volunteers time down there
each year as part of a program put together by a local minister and his wife.
They talked about how their trip had gone and said that they had met this girl whom the
minister and his wife thought had great potential, but she needed to get out of Mexico to
be educated. As she had dual citizenship (her father, who had died when she was young, was
American), there would be no visa problem, but they needed to find a home for her to live.
As they knew I placed foreign students with American families, they asked if I had any
suggestions of people they might call to see if they would like to host Marie for a year.
Never one to be able to say no, I immediately said "we'll take her."
Most of our students had been male, which was fine because they could share a bedroom with
the four boys. On the rare occasions when we'd had women live with us, they slept in the
living room. We'd never had someone live in the living room for a whole year. And I'm sure
Marie never dreamed she'd be sleeping on a hide-a-bed for a year.
The short version is that she came and we got along very well. She had some adjustment
difficulties but after the first few months, she blossomed. The potential that she
displayed in Mexico was very apparent. This was a girl who was intelligent, a hard worker,
and she was going to make something of herself.
In the 15 years since I picked up this frightened girl from a home in Sacramento, she has
indeed "made something of herself." I can't remember now all the things she did,
but she graduated from Sacramento State College in business. She was chosen to go to Peru
on a special international business program. She worked for some part of the state
government for awhile on some sort of special deal. She wrote a book, I believe. It seemed
that everything she touched turned to gold-and not out of luck; because she has a good
head on her shoulders, knows what she wants, and is willing to work for it.
She married Mannie, a man from India, five years ago and shortly after their marriage they
opened a restaurant in Sacramento. It's called Todo em Poco ("all in pieces")
and was designed to be a two-part restaurant-one side was the "fine dining"
Mexican restaurant and the other side was a more casual pizza parlor. It never quite
divided up the way she originally anticipated, but they've had incredible success and in
the past year were named best restaurant in Sacramento by one newspaper, were named one of
the top 10 restaurants in the area by Sacramento Magazine, and Marie was invited to start
her own cooking show in a local Mexican TV station.
Now they've been offered a second restaurant, this one in the heart of downtown Sacramento
(for those familiar with Sacramento, it's on 21st St. between L and K). It's to be called
Isabella and will feature Italian food, Mexican food, and tapas. Part of the building is a
nightclub and so there will be entertainment as well. The area is also well known for a
high concentration of gays and lesbians and apparently this has been a well-known lesbian
hang-out, so she is very excited about catering to the gay and lesbian community.
I listened to her chatter last night and I marveled at the worldly, ambitious,
hard-working woman she is…that she has always been. Ideas just streamed out of her as
she talked non-stop. The graphic was drawn for her by Esteban Villa, muralist, printmaker,
art educator and community activist, who had dinner at Todo em Poco and left it on a
napkin for her as a tip (apparently Picasso used to do this in his leaner years). It was a
drawing of her as she waited tables and she kept it, framed, for a couple of years and
when looking for a logo for Isabella's, she decided that she wanted to use this graphic.
So it is carved into her furniture and on all of her advertising and she says that the
restaurant is going to flourish so much that the logo will become famous.
Having seen what she has made of her life in the past 15 years, I have every confidence
that this will come to pass.
This picture was taken at the wedding of Walt's cousin,
Gerald and his wife Melissa. I just love it. The two little kids are Kayleen
and Ernest Kevin, children of his cousin Ernie. The others are, left to right front:
Vince (our Malaysian son), David, Jeri, Tom. Then behind Tom with the
arrow pointing to her is Marie, then Ned, Paul and Marcello (from Brasil).
 Thanks for your nomination
of Funny the World for a Diarist.net Legacy
award, of all things. You can find all the nominees here.
Congratulations to all the other nominees--especially my
buddies Haggie and Marn.
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