Coffee Thoughts

I
It's in my DNA. It's a part of my soul. I am addicted to coffee shops and cafes. It started when my mother, attempting to lure me into shopping for school clothes, suggested stopping for coffee and a sandwich. "And", she said, "You can read your book while eating." We often split a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich.

When she got older she frequented a coffee shop with her friends, often for Sunday coffee and breakfast. When she died her friends invited me to the Sunday hangout, Mitzi & Don's, for a celebration of her life—-over breakfast.

"Your mother always ordered a sunny side up on wheat toast with a side of fries, unsalted." I ordered the same breakfast.

I wrote some notes in my Moleskin notebook — interrupted by the regulars stopping to say hello. One of the owners told me that my mother loved his whitefish and she usually had him put some hot water in the coffee because it was too strong.

Today I am seated in my favorite coffee shop. Before starting to type Lauria came by to discuss a new book; the owner's mother, who is visiting from Detroit, stopped to chat. Sometimes I say—I need to get some work done, but today I'm willing to spend time talking as long as there's some time left to read and write.

I even found a coffee shop, Castle Rock Coffee and Candy, in Torrey, Utah —at the juncture of Highway 12 and 24— and sat outside and drank my latté. When the temperature hovered between 90 degrees and 92 degrees and I had used up my allotment of shade I left. (Having hiked for several hours, I thought that I had earned time to write, read or stare ahead.) The cafe is still there—

Chain cafes usually don't appeal to me—unless it's day when other places close for holidays. The sameness of furniture, chairs, pictures —layouts, bathrooms, menu items— create a cookie cutter ambiance.



II

Doing the same thing, following a routine, holding a set opinion, not changing —

We all follow set patterns, establish ways of doing, cling to perceptions, not changing—

To change requires effort, even altering long held opinions, resisting the ease of the known—

Sometimes an event, an illness, a word heard, forces a person to stop, skid to a halt —

And while in the whorl an examination of life presents itself as a possibility. Imagine the questions asked, the statements uttered?

Do I really believe that?

I'll call.

The box expands and new configurations emerge.

And then when the wave retreats, when the ashes cool, the routine, the set opinion, the long held perceptions cover the shoots.

Stasis.

III

Yet—

Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations.

~Faith Baldwin