Awareness.

There is this book that I've been reading for almost a year now--it is a sort of compilation of excerpts from theological and spiritual books written by old thinkers like C.S. Lewis and Thomas Merton, men who really understood the meaning of things--this is really rich material.  And this little supplemental book kind of takes a theme each week and delves into it with all of these varying views and perspectives and references to the Bible that have to do with that particular subject.  After a year you'd think I would be tired of this old brown book that my dad handed down to me, but I'm not.  And, in fact, as the year comes to an end I think I'm actually nervous for this book to conclude because it has helped me to take such giant steps forward these past months.  And then I talk to my dad and he tells me that he read that book over and over again for about twenty years. I can see why.

Anyway, this week the subject of the book is "Awareness" and it is all about how God can be found in thousands of places--everywhere, really--if only we would be aware of his surrounding presence in the plain things.  I stared out the window thinking about this for a while this morning, considering the things I don't actually appreciate.  I mean actively.  For instance, I have a job!  I mean, that seems stupid, but really.  I have a job that helps me to pay for the things that I need.  Some people don't have the luxury of a job.  And the sun, for instance. It's sunny most days where I live.  When it's grey I appreciate the sun, but when it's sunny I don't. On grey days I am a gremlin. I can't keep my eyes open, I'm grouchy and crampy and generally reclusive.  But on sunny days I'm a happy and curly and creative.  It's amazing what the sun does for my soul, but I don't thank God for the sun when it's sunny. (As I write this, I am amazed by my own ignorance).

So I had this whole haze of thoughts on awareness today when I was sitting behind the counter at the coffee shop (it was my last day working there) and this first-class character walks in.  Most of the people that come in the shop are regulars, but not this man.  He walks in, sort of swaggers, and practically hits his head on the top of the door jamb because he is so tall. He has this kind of lumberjack look about him but he's got a Hawaiian shirt rather than flannel plaid.  He stops in front of the pastry case and I tell him the old "everything is locally baked" line, but I kind of whisper it because he is so big and so quiet.  And he nods at me, slowly lifting up his eyelids enough to show me the twinkle in his eye, telling me that I don't really have to say anything.  He's just going to decide in his own sweet time.  So I just stand there sort of staring at this incredibly substantial man whose head is bald and shining with the reflection from the overhead bulbs.  His woolly mustache is kind of reddish and his arms are just huge.  And it occurs to me now as I write that it is entirely possible I remember this man as bigger than he really was, but I was just so enamored by him in all of his sixty-two-year-old glory.  

So he finally decides on this pastry, a big cinnamon and sugar and walnut frosted thing that is appropriately named "Bear Claw."  Of course he wants the bear claw.  And then I ask him if he wants something to drink.  And of course he does.  I assume it'll be a black coffee, but it isn't.  He orders a milk.  This Goliath of a man orders a big cup of whole milk.  But he wants ice. And he wants a straw.  

It just struck me so funny, this enormous man drinking a big cup of milk with ice through a straw while he eats this super sweet and delicious pastry that's locally baked.  He sits there for thirty minutes eating and slurping away at his milk.  I mean, my brother and I used to drink iced milk when we were about three and a half feet tall.  After furtively watching him for a while and secretly stealing a picture on my cell phone camera, I decide that it is perfect.  It is absolutely appropriate for him to be drinking milk and eating a delightful pastry at 10:30 in the morning when everyone else is either at work or at school.  So bafflingly appropriate.  And then it occurs to me that perhaps I am experiencing a taste of awareness impetuous.  I could get used to living like this-

bugs.

I have a completely irrational aversion to insects.  Primarily I fear them, despite my rational intelligent understanding of my relative size.  But though I can talk myself out of this anxiety as long as the day, the second a bee swoops within three feet of me, I panic and hop around, spurting intelligible syllables from the mouth.  It's pathetic.

Nagging bugs are different from perilous bugs.  Gnats, flies, ants and mosquitos fall into the "nagging bug" category.  

In honor of nagging bug season, I'll publish a poem I wrote in July.

Mug air

sitting stagnant

ly on my beading skin

dotting salty dew

drops one irksome black fly

will not seem to stay

away from me, 

fly!

Tapping my foot to

determinably pay

not any attention

to the tip-toeing

winged heckler.

This tapping toe

is making me

hot.

7/19

well fed and satisfied.

In February I was finishing up my senior year of college.  I drove down south to North Carolina to visit my sister, a high school Spanish teacher, and her husband for a long weekend and she surprised me with some tremendous news.

We drove out to pick up my brother-in-law from work and on the drive there I asked her how she'd been feeling.

"Eh, alright.  I haven't been sleeping well."

"Stressed at school?" I asked nonchalantly, examining the cracks in my fingernails as she made a left turn.

"No.  I'm pregnant."

There is no way to describe the emotion that coursed through me at that moment, followed by the insatiable thirst I suddenly had for words that would not flow.  I don't remember really, but I know I must have gaped and stammered at her like a middle school boy when he first tries to give a book report to his English class.  After a funnel of emotions, some screeching and some physical bursts from my arms and legs, we were at her husband's office and I think I finally cried.  We hugged for a while and I made all kinds of ridiculous claims about the wonderful things I would teach this niece or nephew. My sister, two years older than me, always the pioneer into things unknown to us, was the mother of her precious unnamed unborn child.  I was overwhelmed.

Over the course of the next months, I neared graduation and, unsure of my life's destination, decided to move down to North Carolina to live with my sister for the summer--our last hurrah as kind-of-kids, pre-real-adulthood.  We decided that, for some reason, bearing a child ushers you into true adulthood, whereas college graduation merely ushers you out of the season of perpetual and constant "hanging out."  

On May 2nd I graduated, and on May 3rd my family ate an enormous brunch at the hippie co-op diner in my college town, packed up a truck and my Honda Civic, and moved me four hours south to North Cackalacky.  

Now it is nearing the end of August. My sister's baby is due September 6 and she has begun to resemble a moving truck--a car's width from the back, but there's that huge nose that juts out the front and renders the driver blind to anything within twenty-five feet of it's front wheels.  She ain't makin' it to nine months, sister.  

And as she prepares to embark on this journey of motherhood so promptly, I know that it is time for me to shape up and ship out.  The time is also right for me in the season that I am in to move to the city where my fiance lives, to the place where I wanted to live from the beginning.  But I feel sort of drenched in homesickness for my sister already because I will mourn her daily sweet company so deeply.  

I sat on the back porch just the other day, thinking about these past four months and the unexpected opportunity we have had as sisters to live together again after six years of living so far apart. It occurred to me that I have a sort of stair-step view of events and circumstances, a belief that most things and events in our lives are stepping stones to the next balcony, to the next open door through which we are beckoned to walk and discover an entirely different and somehow more wide open room.  However I realized that this summer, these months of living with my born best friend, was a place without an exit door.  It was simply a back porch under a shady oak tree, a place where we could sit and enjoy the beauty of the day without having to move on.  Perhaps I will learn something in the future that I have not yet seen, but I believe that the reason for my living with my sister this summer was not to prepare for some other thing or to move me forward or to challenge me through growing pains to maturity, though I'm sure we have both grown.  This summer was simply a gift of time and relational richness with a woman who has always loved me and whom I will always love. 

I will remember this summer with my sister for our visits to the farmer's market and our mornings with coffee and our Bibles, our trips to the gym and the first time that I saw her baby roll around inside her belly making rolling waves on her swollen abdomen.  I'll remember how she made molasses cookies so the house would smell like it did when we were kids and how she would come and crawl into my bed with me when her husband was away on overnight business trips.  I'll remember how sweetly she smiled while folding her unborn baby's clothes when she first washed them with anti-allergenic detergent, our frequent trips to TCBY for soft serve frozen yogurt and how she would remind me to bring my lactaid pill.  I'll remember sharing small sips of red wine that she pined for, the way that she sniffled every morning because of year-round allergies and the way that she made that concentrated face when she painted water color fish for the nursery, the way that her stomach protruded from her t-shirt when she painted the living room.  

I will remember and count myself rich for the simple summer I got to spend with my big sister.

discount stuff.

There is a large consignment boutique around the corner from the coffee shop where I work that sells all kinds of high-end discount home furnishings. From the name, you'd expect the owner to be a high-energy middle-aged woman that's all airbrushed with liquid foundation and bright red lip liner.  I did think that, I confess, until one day early this summer when the owner stepped into my own place of employment to order a cappuccino.  

I really thought he was a bit of a tool at first when he elbowed up on the counter and affectionately referred to my boss as "darling" with a wink.  But I was wrong and by the time he had ordered his drink and paid for it, leaving a buck in the tip jar, he'd won my heart.  He is a five-foot-four beach-bum has-been.  His voice is a combination of Marty McFly and Arnold Schwarzeneger with a New York accent and he can hardly blink without flirting but his heart is solid gold and he's a great tipper.  

We bump into each other outside of his shop one evening as he's locking it up.  I mention that I should come in some time, I've never seen his stuff.  This, I quickly realize, is a very innocently stupid thing to say because of course he invites me in for a private screening of his store--a less than ideal scenario.  But with no real reason or excuse to back out, I follow him in.  He shows me his merchandise--beautiful furniture and china, old books and candelabras. Really neat antique stuff, and he tells me that when I have to furnish my house I should come back and he'll give the "family discount."  He is a class act and preciously genuine at the same time.  He calls me "sweet angel"--did I mention that?

As I'm leaving he starts telling me about his current girlfriend (my "aww, maybe he really is just a good guy" sentiments starting to leak out like air conditioning from a cracked window).  She is thirteen years younger, looks like a Barbie.  But shoot, he says, she wants to get married.  He doesn't want to.  "Because after the sex," he says, "what do we have in common?"  He laughs and shakes his head.  "I just want to fish with the fellas--I been married. I been there, I don't wanna go back."  I shake my head too, at a literal loss for words.  We don't think the same way about realtionships. He know's I'm getting married soon--he says he thinks we're young, but that it'll probably work out--perhaps a lie?  He says "as long as your in love..."  I assure him that we are.  I know he probably doesn't think my marriage will last, but I'm pretty sure he sincerely hopes for the best.

I tell him my last day at the coffee shop is Tuesday and he promises to come in.  He'll order his cappuccino and leave a dollar, promising I'll always get the family discount. 

Coffee shop blues

I am a barista at a coffee shop that is just about to go out of business.  The owner, a forty-year-old woman who recently separated from her husband after twenty-one years of marriage because of 'discontent', says that closing the store would break her heart because owning a coffee shop was her dream, her baby.

And though I am not overly attached to this coffee shop (I have only worked there for about four months), it occurred to me the other morning that it would be a microcosmic tragedy to see this place close its doors.

The shop is not glitzy.  It's basic--the music comes out of an old stereo system, the chairs are beat up and mixed up and the drinks are advertised on a chalk board above the register that was bought several years ago at Office Depot for $39.99.  In other words, each button pressed in a different way rings up the price for about five different drinks.  It hisses when you press the subtotal key sometimes, but not on Thursdays.  And sometimes, if you listen, you might hear it humming.  The stapler is busted but if you shake it, it might staple for you. But only once.  

The point I am getting at is that the shop itself is nothing to write home about.  The thing that makes this particular hole in the wall so terribly important is the motley hodgepodge of regulars who walk through the door each day.

At 6:30 a.m. I turn on the flashing sign to say OPEN and then plop down in front of the NY Times with my free coffee, the chief perk of employment here, and wait.  Within five minutes the small mouse girl comes in to order her large strawberry smoothie. (Did I mention that we make a variety of smoothies as well?)  She smiles and whispers her order, handing me her blue bank card.  I wonder if she knows that I know her order by now.  Or perhaps she still tells me because of the time that we were out of strawberry for a week and she had to choose something different. Traumatic. Her perfume reminds me of the waxy lip balm I used to buy at Claire's boutique when I was twelve--and I can smell it as soon as she reaches across the counter with her card. But she is sweet, and as she nods to thank me for the smoothie I wonder if she is quiet because it is so early or because she is just that diminutive of a person. 

Clint is a biker--a road cyclist, I should say--and he brings his own aluminum travel mug. He gets regular coffee, which costs him $1.60, but always puts a dollar bill in the tip jar which, so early, is usually empty. I hope that sometime I'll get to tell him how important that dollar is.  I think that for some reason this man looks at me like he knows that I am intelligent and capable.  He gets that it's hard to pay bills when you make close to minimum wage.  He gets that I'm trying to write a book--so he contributes a dollar a day, like you see on those commercials for kids who are poor in Africa.  I'm not that bad off, but the dollar a day really does make a difference.

There is a guy that comes in early, by eight o'clock at the latest, and orders a super sweet "coffee drink" with caramel,  and then sits down with his laptop in the seat by the window and begins typing, earbuds in place.  He will stay there all day--he actually sets up battlements.  He takes periodic bathroom breaks and around noon pulls out a peanut butter sandwhich and eats.  He stays until I leave--at four-thirty.  This guy is so disciplined it makes me nervous.  At first I feel like I should whisper, but by the time he's been there for all those hours, I kind of forget about him.  Recently I got the guts to interrupt his religious devotion and ask what he was doing.  This guy literally jumped at my question--I think he was so used to his own solitude that my address jarred him.  He actually stood up, walked over to the counter, and began to explain to me that he had recently spent a year in Egypt researching the economy and he was now back to write his thesis. And so that is what he was doing on these coffee shop days, writing his thesis from eight to five.  This of course made me feel totally childish, realizing that I could never sit still for nine hours to write literature on the economics of an African country.  So I offered him a cup of water.  He took it.

There are a lot of quirky every-dayers. One guy comes in for a medium coffee in a large cup with no lid. He also gets a pumpkin muffin on a large plate.  He microwaves it and then cuts it up into little bitty bite-sized pieces.  It's so strange, you know, watching a very well-groomed, well-spoken, good looking forty-five year old business man go about this ritual every day.  And then there is Deb, who calls in to order "her latte," which is a small latte with skim milk--pretty simple.  But if you ask her what she wants, she gets flustered and can't tell you.  Stuart, who gets a large coffee, is a bee keeper on his grandfather's farm.  This, of course, is not his "job"--this is for recreation.  His real job is maintenance at a private middle school in the area.  Barbara is a delightful mother of one who hates Fridays and loves Mondays because she cherishes the time that her husband is at work and her daughter is in school.  She comes in and orders a great big pastry and reads her library book.  Dr. Cell Phone, whose name we have recently discovered to be Denise, has her latte, and seems to always be in a very pressing conversation at the hour of seven each morning.  Who is already wound up at seven in the morning? Baffling.  

There is a coffee shop rolodex in the front of my brain--on each card there is a face and a drink.  Sometimes a pastry.  I just flip through that baby all day long every day and make drink by drink, like the steady humming of a loom. It's beautiful, really.  The shop is, for each person, their own little getaway spot.  The place where they brush shoulders with a "coffee girl" and maybe a few others.  But it's a kind of haven from home.  

And that is why it would be a crummy blow for our little coffee headquarters to go under.  The shop breathes with stories and brilliance.  A thesis to change the world is written here, friendships are grown here, houses have been bought and sold here, over-the-phone break-ups were here and broke high schoolers bring there dates here. Weary spirits are fueled here every single day.  They may not realize, but I've watched a thousand seeds planted in the two-hundred square feet of this place and a garden is growing.  I want to give it some more time.