I rush too much. Although one part of my brain had registered that Lombardi’s restaurant was going to close in early October, my brain and body were rushing to the next event, running late to yoga, late to meet someone, too late for the library. But since I was locked out of the library, I finally read the words on the glass windows of the restaurant: “one day left.”

Why did it take the words "one day left" for me to consider what Lombardi’s has meant to me in the last 23 years? I wanted to eat there the night it was first reviewed (highly) in the Seattle Times, even though I lived in a starter apartment and had only gone west of 15th Avenue Northwest on my way to Ray’s Boathouse. I called for a reservation, but they were fully booked.

By the time I first ate there, the "we" that was "we" then had bought a house and moved to Ballard, lured over the bridge to the Ballard Market and then pulled toward Salmon Bay. I remember feeling so at home at Lombardi’s after that first dinner: Was it the roasted garlic or the ravioli di quattro formaggio? I said to Jim, “Should I go up to the owner right now and tell her that we’re going to be regulars?”

Long, long ago, even before I was in grade school I would sometimes meet my father for lunch at a cozy Italian restaurant back in Burlington, Vermont. We always had the manicotti and it was always just us. It made perfect sense that from my father’s first visit, once we’d moved to Ballard, that he too loved Lombardi’s, with or without manicotti on the menu.

So when we realized we should probably be hosting a dinner for the out-of-town guests the night before a celebration way back in 1990 and needed a room for 25 people that night, where else would we call? I still remember looking down from the front room on the second floor as friends crowded into the entrance below. The tables were arranged in a square so we could all face one another; babies were propped on the floor. My sister called for carafes of wine and antipasti platters. A little girl nibbled the centers out of salami and wore them like eyeglasses. Our server was an unflappable young woman named Susan. My sister whispered to my dad, “She deserves a really good tip.”

When my father called Lombardi’s the next day to explain that he had inadvertently tipped on top of an already included gratuity for a large party, the manager said, “I suppose you’re calling about a refund.”

My father replied, “No, I just wanted to let you know that Susan deserved every cent.”

With that he had made quite a friend in Susan, who made us beneficiaries of the occasional chocolate mousse, on her, and fussed over my father on what used to be frequent visits.

Then we had a child and there was always something at Lombardi’s that Emily would eat. The years passed. The bread changed and for a while we tried other places, but knowing that Lombardi’s was there if we needed it. At an occasional lunch or during a visit from my father, the roasted garlic was always on the table, but more importantly, the smell of it was always on 22nd Avenue Northwest.

Whereas Lombardi’s had been an upstart, it became an old-timer. When an aunt returned for the first time since 1990, where did she want to go? Lombardi’s. Suddenly it came back on my radar like a home away from home. My partner had changed, but once again I was a regular.

I can still picture the table upstairs where I told Martin about “the house.” How cozy it was the night that we couldn’t bear being snowbound anymore and we walked there, ice cracking on the snow’s crust after the temperature plunged. But for all the times I can remember being warm and well-fed inside the windows, there were a thousand other times that I passed by on the sidewalk and was warmed in a different way.

Ballard was a very different part of town 23 years ago. The Ballard Lombardi’s was located in a site that already had a long history dating back to its days as a pharmacy and even earlier. With its annual Garlic Festival and half-price wine nights, Lombardi’s owned the corner of Northwest Market Street and 22nd Avenue Northwest for almost a quarter of a century.

One day later, its doors were indeed closed to customers, and by Monday morning, the site was being stripped. Before the corner’s next incarnation, for a time, we’ll pass what remains of the Lombardi’s. Countdown over there will be years to regret its closing and store of memories it created, but we’ll have to do it without the smell of garlic, the glimpse of marinara sauce from above and the hubris of taking a place for granted.

Lombardi’s restaurants remain open in Issaquah and Everett, but the original location in Ballard closed Oct. 9, 2010.