Victoria Noe

May 10, 2026 by Victoria Noe

I haven't blogged for a while, for a lot of reasons. I've pitched this to no avail over the past year or so, and I decided today, Mother's Day, that it was time to send it out into the world. It's a little long, but here you go, Mom.
 

One day three years ago, I decided to have lunch at the café in the Nordstrom store at Old Orchard Mall in Skokie, just north of Chicago. That in itself was not unusual. I’m there often enough to be on a first name basis with the manager and a couple of the servers. As always, I asked about the soup of the day: it was chicken noodle, something I did not remember seeing before on that particular café menu. I should not have been surprised it popped up. It would have been my Mom’s 94th birthday.

 

I don’t remember when the café at Nordstrom became a part of my life. I live in Chicago, so it certainly wasn’t until they expanded into the Midwest. Daddy loved Nordstrom for their legendary customer service and hint of exclusivity that made shopping there feel special. Mom liked that they didn’t clog their aisles with merchandise, like other stores. Both loved that Nordstrom didn’t decorate for Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving. 

It was probably after Daddy died in 2005 that having lunch at the West County store, in the St. Louis suburbs, became a ritual. When I visited Mom, we would shop in the mall - sometimes alone, sometimes with my daughter - but almost always wound up in the Café Bistro. I normally ordered a turkey avocado club or a shrimp Louie salad. Mom always ate like a bird, not surprising for a woman who rarely hit 100 pounds on the scale. Sometimes we’d share my sandwich, but more often she ordered a cup of their chicken noodle soup. Thick and flavorful (a touch peppery), even a cup is filling. On days when she had little appetite, I had to coax her to finish half the cup. Soup was just the excuse for ordering dessert, which was the real reason why she agreed to eat there.

The dessert of preference was a decadent slice of white chocolate bread pudding: baked French bread soaked in custard, and served with warm vanilla sauce, shaved white chocolate and a few raspberries. Warm and soft on the inside, the outside edges crunched, proof that it had baked to the perfect consistency. Was the fruit there to brighten up an otherwise starkly white presentation? It certainly didn’t fool anyone into thinking that four raspberries transformed it into a healthy dessert. Now and then, Mom would insist she shouldn’t order it because it was ‘too much’. So I’d suggest that we share, which ended her objection every time. I was particularly pleased when she ate more than half, which was not unusual.

Restaurants are known for their clientele as much as their menus. You can judge them by who eats there, for good or bad. When we first started having lunch in the Nordstrom café at West County, I noticed the diners sitting nearby. They looked a lot like us, though I didn’t identify with them. I assumed they were my distant future, not my present.

Given the fact that sixty percent of unpaid family caregivers in the US are women, the demographics were predictable: a middle aged woman accompanying an older woman, clearly mother and daughter. Occasionally there were three generations, with the addition of very young grandchildren who colored quietly or demanded attention or both. The only exceptions were younger women who were paid caregivers to the older women they dined with, or, most unusual, a middle aged man or woman with an older man. These groups made up the majority of lunchtime diners.

The conversations at the tables were often hushed, occasionally animated. The smiles were sincere, but rare and sometimes sad. The familial roles had been reversed, something I knew neither the daughters nor mothers found easy to accept. The daughters were often weighed down with a sadness that only someone familiar with their situation would notice. Now and then, you could see them hold back an impatience that was understandable, but something they were unwilling to give into. Had they just come from a doctor’s appointment that did not bring good news? Was the younger woman’s mind swirling with dozens of details that needed to be addressed in her own life as well as her mother’s as soon as possible after lunch? Were they talking about anything they could think of, to avoid a reality neither one wanted to face? Or were they just trying to enjoy some rare quiet time together? Those scenarios were all too familiar.

I’ve eaten at other Nordstrom cafés and bistros in the St. Louis and Chicago areas as well as New York City. The diners I see in those are very different from the ones at the West County location. At the Nordstrom Old Orchard café, outside Chicago, it’s mostly groups of women shopping and young moms with babies in strollers. In the summer of 2023, teenage girls gathered for lunch, full of high energy conversations after seeing Barbie at the movie complex nearby. At Bistro Verde on the 5th floor of the 57th Street store in New York, there seem to be more business people, likely drawn by the full bar as much as the menu, since they have no shopping bags. It’s only at the West County café that I’ve seen those women like me with the mothers like Mom. I’m not sure why.

As Mom moved through her 80s, her world shrunk and her health deteriorated. No longer working and then no longer driving, she relied more and more on my sister or friends to take her to the grocery store, shopping, or dinner. I tried to time my visits so I could accompany her to the doctors, often with a promise of lunch at Nordstrom. One of those appointments, the week of Thanksgiving, 2017, led to a preliminary diagnosis of dementia. And while that was not a surprise, it was a turning point we all recognized.

Mom broke her hip the week before Christmas, requiring surgery. I headed down to St. Louis, followed by my husband and daughter, who was home from London where she was in grad school. As I was leaving to return to my hotel one evening, I promised that I’d pick up her favorite dessert from Nordstrom the next day. Through a haze of pain meds, her eyes lit up, just a little. 

Two days before Christmas, before heading to the hospital that morning, I returned to the café at Nordstrom. The store had just opened for the day, and though the lights were on, the café would not open for almost two hours. I could hear voices and activity in the kitchen, and waited a few minutes, unsure what to do. 

The manager appeared and asked if she could help me. I told her I wanted to come back when the café opened to get something to go for my mom, who was in the hospital. I was just there to confirm that they had it on the menu that day and to reserve an order so I didn’t waste a trip. God forbid they run out before I could return. Just then the chef came out from the kitchen, so she asked him. "I already made it,” I heard him say.

“We just took it out of the oven,” she smiled. “Let me get it for you now.” I tried to insist that it was unnecessary, that I was glad to return when they were open, but my objections were brushed aside. When she returned with my order, she said she hoped my mother enjoyed it. I don’t remember being charged for it.

I took the box, warm from its freshly baked contents, as well as the separate containers of raspberries, shaved white chocolate, and whipped cream to Mom. It was still morning, so she didn’t eat all of it; didn’t eat even half. But she did eat something and insisted I have a bite myself. I stashed the leftovers in the mini-fridge in the nurses’ station.

Late on Christmas Eve, I followed the ambulance that transported her from the hospital to a rehab facility where she would stay until February. As anyone faced with moving a loved one from a hospital to rehab knows, you’re not given a lot of lead time. Make a decision in 24 hours when it was almost Christmas? So I picked one that was part of the same hospital system, assuming that could help with the transition. It also happened to be close to Nordstrom.

At the rehab facility, Mom’s chart indicated she needed her food pureed, though no one could explain why that order was placed. She refused to eat ‘baby food’ and who could blame her? Even after I got the order changed and chose food from the menu I thought she’d like, her appetite did not improve. So, every week, as I made the drive up and down I-55 between Chicago and St. Louis, I tried to bring some treat with me I thought she’d like - cinnamon rolls or cheesecake, most likely; maybe chocolate dipped strawberries. Nothing seemed to spark her appetite. 

I think I returned to Nordstrom one more time while she was there, to bring her a cup of chicken noodle soup and her favorite dessert. So the last white chocolate bread pudding we shared was not in the café, and once again did not duplicate the experience.

It took a long time after she died that March for me to even look at the white chocolate bread pudding on the menu, much less order it. The café at the Old Orchard store in suburban Chicago had red velvet cupcakes, also with shaved white chocolate and slightly fewer calories, making it easier to justify.

But on February 27, 2023, I ordered a cup of chicken noodle soup and bread pudding, in all its 900 calorie sugar-coma glory, all for myself. For the first time at that location, I heard her voice, telling me it was okay to order our usual dessert. I was instantly reminded of one of her favorite expressions: “If you did it every day, it wouldn’t be special.”

I don’t know, Mom. Maybe it’s time to find out.

 

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