28 posts tagged “coffee” - R.G. Ryan’s Blog on Vox

Conversations With Eddie

3 days ago
4 comments

"Been thinking about getting a real job."

This from Eddie, my disgustingly good-looking African-American best friend as we sat on the patio of our favorite beachside St. Arbuck's enjoying a pleasant, if overcast, afternoon.

"A real job as opposed to what, the unreal one you have at present?" I said while watching a young couple streak by on inline skates, hair flying in the breeze, their skin glistening from a light sheen of perspiration.

He said, "Nah, man, the job's real, but right now it's real slow."

A reality affecting nearly everyone I know in the music industry.

"So what's slower, studio sessions or live gigs?"

"It's all slow, Jack!" he said firmly. "Been slow for most of this year, but nothing like it is right now."

"What about that thing at the Bellagio?"

He screwed up his face in puzzlement and said, "What thing?"

"You know, that thing where you were going to do five nights a week with your quartet."

"Man," he said, waving his hand dismissively, "that was all a bunch of hot air. Dude never intended to follow through on that for one minute. Just blowing smoke is all."

I said, "As I recall, the music biz has more than its fair share of that."

"You sure got that right. The whole industry runs on--"

"The stuff that sticks to your boots when you walk through a cattle yard?" I said.

"Exactly!"

Three teenaged girls entered the patio from the sidewalk still dressed in their beach attire--which wasn't much--walking in a tight cluster and all talking excitedly and simultaneously about a boy they had just seen surfing.

Once the twittering trio had made their way inside Eddie said, "That thing about getting a real job. I've actually been thinking lately about just getting out of the music business altogether."

"Because..."

"Well, because it's hard. I mean, you know that."

Immediately a line from "A League Of Their Own" sprang to mind in which Tom Hanks' character says to Gina Davis' character, "If it wasn't hard it wouldn't be baseball."

But since I valued our friendship, I let it go.

"I understand what you're saying," and I truly did, "but it'd be a shame." After a pause of a few seconds I said, "What does Sylvie think?"

He laughed humorlessly and said, "She said she just wants to see me smile again."

"And it's such a nice smile. At least I remember it being so, although it has been a while," I said and took a sip of my iced tea-lemonade. "Any idea what you'd do to replace the income?"

"Income?" he said mockingly. "What's that!"

"You must have thought of something."

He was slow in answering, and when he finally spoke his voice was coated in sorrow.

"That's just the thing, RG...apart from music, I basically have no skills. At least none that are marketable."

We sat there for a few minutes in morose silence.

Then out of the corner of my eye I spotted a guy walking purposefully toward our table.

Ignoring me completely he walked right up to Eddie and said, "You're Eddie Washington, aren't you?"

"Guilty as charged," Eddie said, making a brave attempt at humor.

"I knew it! I told my wife--that's her over there--that it was you."

The guy introduced himself and motioned for his wife to come over, a cute thirty-something blonde woman with a smile that could light up a room.

He said, "We saw you and your quartet last September at that jazz festival down at the beach."

"Really," Eddie said. "Were we any good?"

The guy's wife said excitedly, "Are you kidding? You guys stole the show."

"And the way you play drums," her husband added quickly with a sense of wonder in his voice. "I've never heard anyone do what you do. It actually made me feel things I've never felt before when I was listening to music. Anyway, I didn't mean to interrupt your conversation, but I just had to come over and say thank-you." They started to walk away but the man turned back and said, "And don't ever stop. We need you."

With that the two went back to their table leaving Eddie staring after them with a look of, well, I'm not sure what it was. Perhaps the best way to describe it would be to compare it to the expression on the face of a man dying of thirst who has just had a taste of cool water.

"So," I said, drawing the vowel out longer than necessary. "You got a date in mind when you're going to hang up the ol drumsticks?"

Eddie's gaze snapped back to me and he said, "Not quittin'! Not now...not ever."

And with that, the subject was closed.

I chuckled softly prompting Eddie to ask, "What's so funny?"

I said, "Oh, nothing. I just had a mental picture of you greeting people at Walmart is all."

He threw his napkin at me.

RG...out!

Major League

Jun 23, 2008
6 comments

I may have mentioned this before but if so it bears repeating.

I don't like change.

This being a well-established fact I find it incomprehensible that my wife and I have been "trying out" a new St. Arbuck's.

Our reasoning is that it is much closer to our house than our (read "my") St. Arbuck's.

I don't like it.

I don't like anything about it except possibly that it is in close proximity to a quite lovely city park.

As in right across the street.

And from the air conditioned comfort of its interior you can see much of said park.

Our routine of late has been to rise early while it is still cool (I say this with tongue firmly planted in cheek for "cool" these days relates to anything around eighty degrees which is about all we can expect for a nighttime low) and walk our dog around the park and then over to the St. Arbuck's for coffee, morning paper and conversation.

It's a good routine and sometimes there are things happening in the park that are worth noting.

For instance...

Yesterday morning--that would be Sunday morning--I was easing my way through my coffee and attempting to make sense of vastly conflicting articles on the Op-Ed page when some movement caught my eye.

It was a young couple with two tiny children--both of whom were boys--getting out of their car.

Those of you with young children know all too well the enormous amount of effort this entails what with all the accoutrements one must schlep around now days if one has young children.

One of the boys was perhaps five while the other was no more than two.

Mom took charge of the younger while dad took the elder, along with a bag bulging with various pieces of baseball equipment over to a grassy area for some training.

I'm talking serious training here.

The boy may have been only five, but he knew how to throw, catch and hit.

I casually walked across the street so I could more closely observe the goings on arriving just in time to hear the dad say, "Remember...as soon as you hit the ball start running. Worry about whether it's fair or not later."

The little boy nodded his understanding, shouldered the bat and awaited his father's pitch.

Now, when I say "pitch," I mean it was a real pitch; not some sloppily lobbed cream-puff that one would expect to see with so young of a batter.

And the kid hit it!

I was amazed.

He dropped the bat and raced toward a base marker that had been set up at an appropriate distance as fast as his little legs would carry him.

"Safe!" was the call from a very proud father who, no doubt, had dreams of that boy being Major League someday.

Mom and Junior had wandered into the playing area where the little brother immediately picked up the bat, which was comically large for his tiny frame.

My first thought was that big brother would reprimand his younger sibling for messing with his stuff, but instead he very patiently positioned the bat on the kid's shoulder and showed him how to swing, which he did to the delight of all.

I watched for a few more minutes before making my way back across the street to collect wife and doggie and begin the trek home thinking all the while about the scene to which I had just been witness.

It was all about generations.

That father was no doubt passing along to his children that which had been passed along to him.

Planting seeds is a more accurate descriptive for what I had seen.

It's what we humans do.

We plant.

Water.

Harvest.

Good seed or bad, it matters not for the process is the same.

That young father and mother were planting good seed...very good seed from which, in a few years, will come a bountiful harvest.

My children are grown, but I have grand children about the same ages as those two little boys.

With a final glance back over my shoulder, I mentally started planning our next trip to San Diego, for I have yet a few seeds to plant.

RG...out!

Genesis

May 23, 2008
11 comments

I've talked about this before, but with "Snapshots At St. Arbuck's: hijacked by hope in a neighborhood coffee bar" going to press in just a few short weeks, I wanted to log a few thoughts on the "genesis" of the concept.

It all started quite by chance on one balmy San Diego afternoon several years ago when I found myself ensconced in the corner of a beachside St. Arbuck's slaving unproductively over a chapter in my first novel.

A novel that has since been consigned to the boneyard, if anyone is interested...vile beast that it was.

A young couple sat down at the table next to me and began to talk about plans for their upcoming wedding.

And I sort of listened in.

It wasn't eavesdropping in the classic sense for such was the proximity I couldn't have ignored their conversation if I had wanted to.

The more I listened the more engrossed I became.

Her parents hated the groom and vowed not only to withhold financial support but to boycott the wedding as well.

His parents were quite impoverished and couldn't help, but loved them both fiercely.

They tossed around several options for dealing with the problem and finally settled on getting married on Mission Beach and having the reception at McDonald's with a dance to follow in the park vis-a-vis a boombox.

It seemed that the groom's brother was a minister so even that expense was covered.

Their positive optomism was absolutely compelling.

There were no long faces or carping about what should've or could've been.

They just grabbed the problem and pummeled it into submission.

So impressive was this display that after they left I opened a new Word Document and jotted down a few impressions and saved it in a file I labeled "Story Ideas."

And there it sat in a form of literary solitary confinement until one day I opened it up and got the idea for Snapshots at St. Arbuck's.

So what's the point?

Just this...

Wherever you are, you have a window on the world.

In your car; at the office; in school; at the mall; uh, coffee shops; even at home with your kids.

There are stories all around you in a never-ending human drama.

All kinds of stories, IF you'll just open your eyes and think like a writer.

In fact, think about this...

Take your laptop to a public place and linger until you spot a compelling individual (or group, couple, whatever).

Then begin to describe what you see in your best writer's voice.

Think creatively and dramatically.

Yes, I said "dramatically."

I mean are we writers or not???

My bet is that you will be amazed at what you can produce.

It's no big secret, folks.

My St. Arbuck's is no more interesting than yours.

The secret is that YOU have to be interested in the people.

But I'll warn you...once you start, there's no turning back.

You'll be hooked.

"Snapshots" never would've happened had I not made the choice that day to start writing down what I observe.

Now? I'm 125 pages into "Snapshots" part 2.

RG...out!

About Birds And Stuff--Part 3

May 17, 2008
6 comments

My beloved and I were, as is our custom, sitting on the patio at St. Arbuck's--she waging her daily war against the sudoku puzzle (and usually winning) and I reading about the continual collapse of the housing market and other good news.

Peering over the top edge of the paper I spied a sparrow--young by the looks of him--standing a foot or so away from a piece of bagel the size of my fist!

He seemed too stunned to even move.

I could almost hear his thoughts: "Dude, I've found the mother lode!"

I mean that bagel represented enough food to last the rest of his life; a piece of pastry that was larger by far than his own compact little bird body.

As I lowered my paper and sipped my coffee, he looked behind him, over the top of the bagel; he looked over at me as if to say, "Can you believe this?"

Then reality seemed to set in and he glanced upward toward the Mesquite tree's canopy.

He looked at the bagel, then at the tree, then back to the bagel, back and forth, back and forth.

Finally he hopped a bit closer to the gigantic food source and kind of nudged it with his beak as if trying to gauge its weight.

He couldn't even budge it, so there was no way he was carrying it up into the tree.

I could almost hear him thinking, "This is just wrong on so many levels!"

Unbelievably, all this time he had been the only bird in sight.

A bit of fluttering motion from off to the left and a birdie buddy dropped into the scene, looked at his friend, the bagel, his friend.

They both hopped over and nudged the beastly bagel, which, even with their combined efforts wasn't going anywhere.

Finally the original sparrow pecked at the bagel dislodging a crumb, which he immediately consumed.

His buddy joined him and before long they were both pecking away and enjoying a feast.

At one point he kind of looked over at me as if to say, "You want some?"

And of course I replied, "No, dude, I'm good."

Within another minute there were a half-dozen sparrows surrounding the bagel all of whom were following the first sparrow's lead, including a mother who would peck off a crumb, chew it for a minute and drop it into the waiting mouth of her very young baby bird.

It wasn't long before all those birds were kind of standing around looking at each other with bulging gullets saying, "I just can't eat another bite. You take it."

"Nah, man, if I have anymore I'm gonna' puke!"

The funny thing was, the bagel was hardly diminished at all from its original size.

Just then, the bully of the patio, a black bird, showed up to take over, only the sparrows moved willingly, slowly, aside saying, "Hey, knock yourself out big fella."

He looked at them hesitantly at first as if considering the possibility that it may be a trap, but within a few seconds he was pecking away at the beast, ultimately dislodging a portion that with his superior size and strength could be easily carried to the branches above.

Maybe I just need to get a life, but I found the whole episode amazingly poignant.

I mean it's highly likely that the bagel was more food than any of those sparrows had ever seen at one time. So much food that it couldn't even be stored. So what to do? Well, you break it down into smaller portions, eat it on the spot--you eat your fill. You enjoy every bite and worry about tomorrow when tomorrow comes, even going so far as to share the excess with a sworn enemy.

I looked at my wife and kind of shook my head.

She said, "What?"

"I love birds," I replied, returning my attention to the business section where I read about the dollar's continued slide against the Euro.

RG...out!

Conversations With Eddie

May 13, 2008
13 comments

"You think you'll ever grow your hair out again?"

The question came from Eddie, my disgustingly good-looking, African-American best friend as we sat on the patio of St. Arbuck's enjoying coffee and conversation.

I said, "Assuming I had hair to grow, why would I want to? I mean, look at that guy." I gestured toward a young man whose highly coifed hair fought valiantly to stay in place against the wind. "You don't see me having issues like that."

Eddie glanced at the young man and said, "No, and neither do I. Truth is, I don't miss the hair at all."

"Not even the attention you used to get because of the dreads?"

"Well, there is that," he said with a sigh. "You gotta admit your boy had some illin' dreads."

"Illin'," I said quizzically.

"Yeah, you know, sick."

"Sick as in, bad or good?"

"Bad, as in good."

Squeezing my eyes shut tightly, I massaged the bridge of my nose and said, "You know, it's getting really difficult to keep pace with the constantly changing landscape of your vocabulary."

"Nothin wrong with my vocabulary," he said defensively as a St. Bernard puppy drug his owner across the patio in pursuit of a carelessly discarded piece of pastry. The puppy had to be at least ninety or a hundred pounds.

"I didn't say you had a poor vocabulary, quite the contrary. It's just that your verbiage is altered in cadence and style so often I find myself quite frequently adrift and struggling to comprehend."

He wrinkled his brow and said, "What the heck did you just say?"

I started to respond only to be interrupted by the dog owner, a rather petite fifty-something woman saying loudly, "Arlo! Come on! Come on, Arlo. The man doesn't want his face licked." as Arlo showered a man at a nearby table with a full compliment of doggy affection.

To the man's obvious chagrin, I might add.

I said to Eddie, "What was the question?"

"I asked you what you just said to me."

"Oh, that. Well, I was trying to explain that you change your speech patterns and word selection a lot, to the extent that I find it somewhat difficult to know what you mean in any given situation. Is that better?"

He cocked one eyebrow and said, "A little. I mean, dude, if you want to talk about someone's word choices..." he didn't finish the sentence, but merely gestured dramatically in my direction.

"What?" I said.

"You know what."

"No, I don't. If I did, I wouldn't have asked for an explanation."

"All right," he said leaning forward in his chair. "It's that going around the barn thing I talked to you about before. You just have a way of expressing yourself that's different from most folk."

"And this is a problem?"

"No...yes, I mean, mostly it's not, but sometimes you'll speak an entire sentence and I won't have the slightest idea what you've just said."

"Well, welcome to my world!" I said emphatically.

"Look, just because I choose to use the language of my people at various times and in various ways, that doesn't mean I'm a poor communicator."

"The language of 'your people?'"

"That's right! The language of my people."

I said, "You grew up in an affluent family in a house three blocks from the ocean. Your people, if indeed they could be called that, were mainly surfers!"

"That's right. Why you think I say 'dude' so much?"

Arlo, the St. Bernard puppy, chose that moment to try to get frisky with a Jack Russell Terrier who had just come onto the patio with its owner. Apparently the Terrier wasn't in the mood and growled ferociously at Arlo giving him a nip on his hindquarters which sent the poor pup scurrying behind the protection of his owner.

I said, "I'm not sure why we're even having this conversation."

"It's because you bein' obtuse," he said smugly.

"Obtuse? Do you even know what that means?"

Looking upward and to the left he said, "I believe it means insensitive and imperceptive. Purposely so."

"Yeah," I said, "and also lacking intelligence!"

He smiled and said, "I'm down with that."

The store manager wandered by and said, "You two fighting again?"

Eddie and I glanced at each other and said, "No!" simultaneously.

She did a, "wink, wink, nudge, nudge," motion with her elbow and walked away.

"We be fightin'," Eddie said, "she'd know it!"

"Everyone would know it!"

"You got that right."

The Jack Russell trotted over to Arlo, sniffed around his doggie parts and then licked him on the nose.

I said, "Looks like the start of a beautiful friendship."

"I ain't lickin' your nose and that's that!" Eddie said.

"Promise?"

RG...out!

In Which Barney Gets Misunderstood

May 6, 2008
6 comments

I have ears.

I hear.

I hear quite a lot, actually.

I can't help it.

And sitting in the St. Arbuck's at the airport on Sunday afternoon while awaiting my flight to Las Vegas I heard someone proclaim in an overly loud tone of voice, "Yeah, I'm only here because I got kicked off a cruise ship."

Turning around in my seat to identify the source of the comment, I spotted a forty'ish man sitting at an adjacent table who appeared to be talking to a man and woman standing in line.

He was dressed in green plaid shorts, thong sandals a pink-hued Hawaii shirt and a tan canvass hat.

His black hair was long and uncombed and he had at least a day's worth of stubble on his face.

Even with the mismatched attire and unkempt appearance you could readily see that he was a reasonably attractive man.

I don't know why, but I immediately began to think of him as, "Barney."

His speech was slurred just enough to indicate that at some point during the day Barney had attempted to quench the terrible emotional pain at having been so rudely ejected by consuming large quantities of alcohol.

"Yeah, they didn't want me. So now I'm here. I've been here since ten this morning."

The man in line checked his watch, as I did mine--four PM.

Unbelievably the man in line, who I decided was named "Roger," began to engage Barney in conversation.

"Why did they kick you off?"

"Well," said Barney, "I went on the cruise thinking that it would be a good way to meet women."

"And it wasn't?"

Barney laughed and said rhetorically, "You'd think so, wouldn't you? But it wasn't."

At that point the woman kind of tugged on Roger's sleeve as if to say, "Leave it alone." But he ignored her and said, "So why did they kick you off?"

Barney stared at the passing crowd, sipped his coffee and just when it seemed he hadn't heard Roger's question, or worse yet was ignoring him completely said, "Women just aren't as tolerant as they used to be."

Roger's wife was now whispering something to him that I could only imagine as being, "Would you just come on and order our coffee and leave this guy alone!"

Roger said with a smile, "So you hit on some woman and she didn't like it so she reported you?"

Barney barked out a short, humorless laugh.

"You know, I'm a nice guy. Everyone says so. I mean don't I seem like a nice guy to you?"

Roger's wife rolled her eyes and Roger said, "Well, I don't really know you, of course, but, sure, you seem like a nice guy."

"That's what I was thinking." Barney said raising his arms and letting them flop against the table top. "But that girl didn't want me around her. I tried and tried to convince her that I was a good dude, but she told me to leave her alone and actually cussed at me."

"So you cussed back?"

The question came from Roger's wife who, against all reason was now as fully engaged in the conversation as Roger.

Barney said quickly, "No, no...nothing like that. I don't cuss at women." (Which came out sounding something like, "I don cush-at wimmin.").

Barney continued, "I can take a hint so I stopped asking her to have a drink."

Roger said, "So, if you didn't attack her or cuss at her, then why did you get kicked off the ship?"

"I think it had something to do with being in her room."

"You were in her room?" Roger's wife said incredulously.

"Only for a minute."

"But why?"

"Well, see, I figured out where she was berthed, and I went down to apologize; like, in person, you know, and when I got there the door was open."

Roger said, "So you went in?"

"Well, I kind of pushed the door open and asked if anyone was there. No one said anything so I kind of went inside."

"Oh, my god!" said Roger's wife. "Are you crazy?"

Barney grinned and said, "Apparently, because right about then she came back. Well, I'm in her room, she's standing in the doorway and there was really no way for me to explain things so I said, 'Hi. Wanna get married?' Of course she didn't think it was funny and started screaming like she was being raped, or something."

"And that's how you got kicked off the ship?" Roger said.

"Not exactly."

Roger's wife widened her eyes and said, "You mean there's more?"

Barney finished the last of his coffee and said, "Let me give you a little advice about cruise ships--don't ever try to be funny because they just don't get it. Those ship's security guys who showed up after she started screaming--oh, and she wouldn't let me leave, either--anyway, those guys come, see me in her room with her screaming in the doorway and I was just trying to be funny and everything so I says, 'I had to tell her no more and she went crazy.'"

Roger and his wife looked at each other and then started laughing.

I laughed too.

Barney shook his head and said forlornly, "It's a terrible thing to be so misunderstood."

RG...out!

"...and the friends I've left behind."

Apr 29, 2008
13 comments

We were sitting on the patio of St. Arbuck's--that would be my beloved and me--enjoying a morning that, thus far, had been about as easy as convincing someone to accept a free trip to Hawaii.

I like mornings like that.

By eight-thirty we had already walked the dog and gone through a decent workout at the gym and were enjoying the stretch of good weather that always precedes the dreaded triple-digit heat that settles in about the second week of May and hangs around until October'ish.

She walked in from the parking lot, her eyes casting about as if in search of someone; an attractive blonde woman of about forty years or so dressed casually in a blue, floral print sun dress that draped nicely on her slender figure.

Walking towards the entrance she stopped just short as if debating whether she really wanted to go inside.

After a few seconds hesitation, with hands cupped around her eyes she pressed against the window and peered through the glass scanning the interior.

She pulled away, brow wrinkled, glanced at a wristwatch and then her iPhone, spotted an empty table and quickly claimed it.

Obvious to even the most casual observer was the fact that she was there to meet someone and that someone had yet to arrive.

My guess was they were late.

She fiddled with her phone, alternately tapping and dragging her finger across the iPhone's surface as if searching for a number.

And then a car pulled into the parking place that was right in front of her table.

Shielding her eyes against the sun's glare, she smiled.

This wasn't just any smile.

It was a smile that came from a special place deep within her soul--a smile that completely transformed her face to the extent that she literally beamed.

I've heard about that a lot throughout my life, you know, someone's face "beaming," but I'm not sure I'd ever seen it happen...until just then.

A brown haired woman about the same age climbed quickly out of an expensive, German car.

Her clothing and accessories bespoke a woman of authority--very definitely corporate--but her face was lit up with the same kind of smile and the two women rushed into a giggling, screaming, jumping-up-and-down embrace babbling simultaneously like a couple of school-aged best friends who hadn't seen each other for a long while.

You could probably make a pretty strong argument that such a hyper-emotional display of public affection was inappropriate; silly, even.

But the thing of it is, neither one cared in the slightest what anyone else on that patio thought...what anyone else on earth thought.

I could only catch every third or fourth word of their conversation, but employing my heightened sleuthing skills I quickly surmised that these were indeed best friends reuniting after a long separation.

One lived in Colorado and the other in Las Vegas; one had been recently divorced and the other was dealing with a problem child at home and a less than secure position at the office; one had just sold a house and the other had just moved in to a new one.

In short, they had a lot of catching up to do.

After a few minutes I didn't really pay any attention to what they were saying; there was no need because their spirt and exuberance communicated far more than words.

Besides, seeing them there, seeing their joy and utter delight in just being together made me start thinking about friends and how few people seem to have really good ones.

Acquaintances there are many...but friends?

My eyes drifted over toward the corner of the patio where four elderly men gather each and every morning.

There they were--telling stories, laughing, bragging on grandkids, teasing each other about this or that, arguing about who was buying coffee the next day and where they were going to golf on Friday.

I sighed deeply, causing my beloved to tear her attention away from the morning's sudoku.

"You got an explanation to go along with that sigh?" she said quietly.

I said, "Not really."

Neatly folding the newspaper so as to provide a better frame for the puzzle she said, "Nope. Unacceptable. You sigh, you gotta say why. It's the rules."

She had me there.

It was a rule of longstanding in our house: You sigh...you gotta say why.

"Well," I said while rubbing my hands over a freshly shaved head. "I think I"m feeling melancholy."

"About..." she prompted.

"Oh, I don't know...friends, I suppose."

"What specifically about friends?"

I glanced at the old fellas, and then at the two women before saying, "I think I'm just missing something here."

"Friends?" she said. "You think you're missing friends?"

I nodded silently.

"But you've got Eddie."

"I know, and don't you dare say anything to him about this conversation or he'll pout for a week! It's not about that, anyway."

She shoved her sunglasses up onto her head and said, "Then, what?"

A parade of memories passed in review in front of the grandstand of my conscious mind; memories of friends who were once close but now thought of rarely, spoken to even less frequently than that.

Memories of pleasant times and conversations, sharing joy as well as pain; the pleasure of friends well-met and the heartbreak of saying goodbye, and saying goodbye, and saying goodbye...

And suddenly the parade turned into a cascade of faces belonging to people I've known from every place we've ever lived; good people, good friends long since lost.

It was all too much.

She touched my hand in that way of hers...that special touch reserved only for me.

"Baby, what's wrong?"

My eyes teared up and I said, "I'm just so tired of saying goodbye to people."

Nodding slowly she said, "This is about leaving Oceanside, isn't it?"

She was referring to my imminent return to being a full-time resident of Las Vegas.

I shook my head, "Yes," and dabbed at the corner of my eye with a shirt-sleeve.

I said, "I don't think I can do this anymore...you know, making friends and then leaving them behind."

She was silent for a few moments, which meant that something significant was about to be said.

A deep breath and then, "You could have stayed in touch with those people over the years, you know. But you didn't because you figured you'd lose them eventually anyway. Am I close?"

"Pretty darned."

"So it's as much a matter of self-defense, of self-preservation as it is anything else. It's like you sever the relationship preferring the immediate pain to the imagined eventual pain."

She was spot on.

"Thank-you, Dr. Phil," I said with a smile.

Returning her attention to the sudoku puzzle she said, "No charge."

I looked at the old men and then at the two women and said, "There are friends that are worth keeping."

"So keep them," she said without looking up.

I hate it when she's so right.

RG...out!

Baby Girl

Apr 15, 2008
8 comments

It was mid-afternoon at St. Arbuck’s and I was at my usual corner table frantically chasing down a creative thought that had flitted through my brain only briefly before departing for regions unknown.

Since it was the only one I’d had for days on end, it simply had to be seized.

She came into the store quietly, almost shyly, stepping just inside the doorway and looking around as if searching for someone—a rather plain looking brown-haired woman of uncertain age, although if I had to guess I would say late thirties.

The door closing against her backside seemed to startle her and she stepped forward and then turned toward the condiment table which was also the direction of my table.

Her brown eyes fell on mine and held for just a second before turning away, but in that momentary contact I saw swimming in their depths a deep, deep exhaustion intermingled with profound sadness.

Since there were no other tables available, she sat at the one next to mine.

She wore jeans, a plain, white, long-sleeved blouse, which was untucked, and no jewelry that I could see.

A plastic grocery bag was looped over her wrist and she placed it softly, almost reverentially on the table top in front of her.

She leaned back in the chair, stared at the ceiling for a few seconds and then blew out a world-weary sigh.

With a quick shake of the head she began to remove the contents of the bag which seemed to contain only a battered, paperbacked Bible, a spiral notepad and a disposable pen.

Since I had completely lost track of my illusive thought I decided to just let it go.

Before opening the Bible she looked around the store once again, only this time she almost seemed to be making sure no one was watching.

When her eyes finally made their way to me, she stared at me for the longest time as if trying to decide whether I posed a threat.

Finally she said in heavily accented English, “Sorry, but I am still scared to read openly.”

I smiled and said, “I’m not sure I understand.”

Nodding quickly she smiled, tapped her chest and said, “Eight years ago I come from Romania.” Pausing briefly she continued, “Eight years, but still scared.”

Not really knowing how to respond, I simply nodded and smiled my most winning smile, which has been known in the past to alternately put people at ease and send young children running for their parents.

I said, “I’m RG.”

She silently mouthed the letters and said with a puzzled frown, “This is a name?”

Laughing I said, “Well, sort of.”

She didn’t press it further and said, “I am Nadia.”

“Nice to meet you, Nadia.”

“And you as well...Aregee.”

I laughed at her attempted pronunciation and said, “Are you here with your family?”

Another sigh and then, “My daughter, yes. Husband, no.” Digging quickly into the bag she pulled out a picture and handed it to me. “Monica.”

The picture was of a tall, slender girl—with perfect teeth which were displayed liberally in a brilliant smile—holding a violin and posing proudly beside a trophy.

“How old is she?”

“Twelve.”

“She’s beautiful,” I said handing the picture back to her. “She has your eyes.”

“Everyone says,” she said as she took the picture and laid it carefully on the table, touching it tenderly. “She is at lesson and I wait here for her. She is very, eh, gifted. Her teacher says she could be professional...like her poppa.”

I said, “He plays professionally in Romania?”

She blinked her eyes rapidly, as if attempting to hold back tears, and said, “Yes. Very good violinist. He was not allowed to leave when we came here—things were different then. And now, immigration to America is very hard. I don’t know when he will come.” A quick breath and then, “So I serve drinks in the casino, and walk...always walking, walking, for hours and hours. My feet hurt, my back. Men say things to me...shameful things. But this I do for Monica...for my baby girl.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It must be very hard.”

Resting her hand absently on the Bible she looked at me and said, “Very hard...yes. But for Monica, I do anything.”

Just then, her eyes shown with a light previously missing, her lips stretched into a lovely smile and she waved toward the entrance where a young lady, obviously Monica, was just entering.

Nadia stood, enfolded her girl in a hug and said, “Oh, my sweet, baby girl. I love you. I missed you so much today.”

“I missed you too, momma,” said Monica, her head against her mother’s shoulder, eyes closed just drinking in the love.

After a few moments she turned Monica toward me and said, “Aregee, this is my baby girl...my treasure. Monica, this is Aregee.”

Monica smiled, wrinkled up her nose and said, “Aregee? This is a name?

Making a mental note to work on a way to explain my name to those of foreign birth, I said, “It’s a long story. Nice to meet you, Monica. I hear you are a very good violinist.”

She said very soberly, “I have to be if I’m to make enough money to bring my poppa to America.”

We engaged in small talk for a few more minutes and then with an invitation to come and visit their church sometime, Nadia and Monica left, walking arm-in-arm across the patio toward the parking lot.

I watched them go and felt a lump forming in my throat as I thought of the sacrifice Nadia made each and every day for her baby girl; of the sacrifice Monica makes for her father.

It made me think of a sentence contained within the pages of that tattered book in Nadia’s bag: There is no greater love than this, than if a man lays down his life for a friend.

And in light of what I had just seen, I suddenly felt as if I had too much of everything.

Aregee...out!

Conversations With Eddie

Apr 1, 2008
16 comments

With coffee in hand I walked toward the corner table in St. Arbuck's where Eddie and I usually sit.

That would be Eddie, my disgustingly good-looking, African-American best friend.

He had gotten there ahead of me and had hovered over a nervous guy in Birkenstocks who was just finishing up and taking his sweet time doing it.

You see, tables are a precious commodity in my St. Arbuck's since they remodelled a couple of months ago.

Quite obvious to all us regulars is that we have become less important to the corporate brain trust than tables filled with everything you "need" to fully enjoy the home coffee experience.

What I "need" is a place to sit after I buy my doggone coffee!

Birkenstock Boy finally left, but only after Eddie asked if he could help him carry anything out to his car.

Actually what he said was, "Do you need me to carry you to your car?"

Or something like that.

Anyway, I sat down and said, "Aren't you going to say it?"

"Say what?" he said, brows knitted together quizzicikly.

"What you always say now days when you see me." He still didn't get it so I said, "You know, Obama '08."

"Man," he said tiredly, "I'm really confused."

"You're confused! Think about the McCain supporters having to deal with the fact that their candidate once had serious talks with the Democrats about joining their party or that he was close to being a running mate for John Kerry in 2004. Now THAT'S confusion!"

He smiled wanly and said, "I guess there's a lot of confusion going around in this election."

"So I hear. But what has you confused about Obama? I mean a couple of weeks ago you were ready to acknowledge his deity."

He was thoughtfully silent for a few seconds.

"Isn't there an old saying about a man speaking whatever his heart is full of?"

"Terrible sentence structure," I said, "but, yeah...there is. According to Luke the physician, the actual quote is, 'what you say flows from what's in your heart.'"

"That's the one." he said. "I listen to that former pastor of Obama's and find it hard to hear anything but anger and hatred coming out of him."

"And from that you conclude..."

"That must be what's in his heart."

"And Obama?" I queried.

"Don't hear none of that. All I hear coming from him is hope."

"And yet, you're still confused."

Sighing deeply he nodded his head.

"It's the association thing."

I said, "What do you mean?"

"The man was a member of Rev. Wright's church for twenty years!"

"So you're saying that if anger and hatred are in someone's heart--"

"It's going to come out continually," he said cutting me off. "And by being in close association you will be affected!" He held up his mostly full coffee cup. "This cup is full of coffee. The coffee is brown, but you and I both know it's mainly just heated water that was once clear."

"What's your point?"

"My point is that clear water cannot and will not come out of this cup because it is full of brown liquid. And if I were to slosh some in your direction, that nifty new teeshirt you're sportin' would be colored by it too."

"Are you saying that Obama has been, uh, colored by being in close association with Rev. Wright?"

He slapped the table top with both hands.

"That's what has me so confused! There is no way I can support someone who has an agenda of racial division--someone who is a hate-monger."

"Well," I said carefully, "For what it's worth, I've never sensed anything like that coming from Obama."

"I haven't either!" he said, his voice rising two octaves.

I took a sip of coffee and said, "Someone told me once that when listening to someone speak, you should take the fish and leave the bones."

He nodded slowly, softly repeating what I said over and over.

"Take the fish and leave the bones. I like that. So you suggesting maybe that's what Obama did with Wright?"

"Hard to say, Eddie. That's just something you're going to have to figure out for yourself."

"I knew you'd say that!"

RG...out!

Fortune Smiles

Feb 7, 2008
4 comments

From our place of safety inside a newly opened St. Arbuck's this morning, my wife and I heard sirens approaching.

Then some more.

Followed by still more.

Sensing something afoot I got up and sauntered over to the large front windows where I saw a group of paramedics, police and fire personnel gathered around a late model domestic automobile sitting askew on the sidewalk in front of the gas station next door.

I couldn't tell at first what had happened, but as I investigated further I saw quite a bit of damage to the passenger side of the car.

Then I noticed a pickup sitting a little ways away whose front end was buckled.

While I couldn't be sure, it looked as if the pickup truck had careened around the corner unaware of the passenger car pulling out from the gas station and had struck it on the passenger side.

The car was sent spinning back toward the curb where it came to rest half on and half off the sidewalk facing the opposite way of traffic.