Browsing Tag

coffee

Guest Posts, Relationships

When Suffering and Appreciation Walk the Dog

June 22, 2022
walk

My husband usually does the first walk, standing at the door, holding out the leash and grumbling, ‘Ready to walk, Dummy?”  Dummy is Rocky and he takes no offense because my husband doesn’t mean any. He loves the furry beast and the fresh air, but this morning the job is mine because my husband has gone off with our three teenaged boys rafting down the Delaware river. I bowed out of the adventure – an activity we did once before when the kids were younger, and the memory of sunburned, miserable wailing along with the impulse to hit my husband with a paddle still haunts. Instead, I stay behind to hang with my cousin who is battling cancer, an entirely different kind of nightmare.

It’s hazy and overcast, the damp of last night’s rain still clings to all the green underfoot and around me. Rocky likes it, considers it a fresh morning salad and we stop every few feet for him to sniff, piss or chew. Typically, I distract myself on these walks with texts, phone calls or even an episode of the latest Netflix show I am obsessed with (Offspring!). With my weak ankles and uneven sidewalks, it’s a middle-aged mom’s rebellious walk on the wild side, but today my phone rests in my pocket. I want to notice the ripe green of the landscape, the peeking sun warming my skin, the orange and black butterfly dancing along a neighbor’s bursting landscaping.

I left my cousin back at Sloan yesterday for yet another complication related to her cancer. It seemed like only a minute ago that her life was full. Overfull. She worked hard when it was work time and played hard when it was playtime with no time or interest in stopping and smelling the roses, or in my case now, the daisies. She is in a bed, where she has mostly laid for months now. Her life no longer her own; at the mercy of her disease and the doctors who (kind of) care for her.

She is emaciated. I run to Carvel to bring her favorite thick shakes or some special treat that she desperately wants to eat. Watching her struggle to finish three bites of anything before the food overwhelms her bloated, distended stomach or makes her nauseous is heartbreaking, somehow making me linger and savor my nightly ice cream sundae but with a guilt that has nothing to do with calories.

The walk is relaxing me, except when Rocky spies a bunny and almost pulls my arm from its socket. “Rocky!” I yell, holding the leash forcefully. “No Bunnies!” His soulful eyes look up to me in remorse, but it is more likely for a consolation for his lost bunny. Sighing, I toss him a treat. Our walk resumes and I go back to focusing on the neighborhood homes and the blooming flowers and not on my cousin who hasn’t had the strength to walk her neighborhood in months. Not that she liked to walk her neighborhood, but that is beside the point.

My cell rings. It’s my youngest son secretly calling from the car to report that he does not want to go rafting, although I already know this. “You are going to have fun,” I reply brightly, even as the memory of his wet and terrified five-year-old face flashes in my brain. “And I’ll have a special treat waiting for you when you come home.”

“Yay, mama!” he says and my heart expands and breaks. He is now thirteen. My cousin’s daughter is only eight.

I turn the corner and pass ribbons of blue and orange roped around the trees. They appeared a couple of months ago in memory of three young lives (two of them brothers) taken the next town over when a car crossed a divider and crashed into them head on. I have thought obsessively about them and their families, and the randomness of a tragedy too much to bear.

It’s everywhere. This suffering. Mixed in with the underappreciated joyful mundane. A typical dog walk. Flowers bursting all around. My friend’s voice on the other side of my cell, relaying a story that has us both cracking up. Gifts beyond measure.

At home, I fill my cup with dark, rich coffee and sip leisurely. Not too long ago, my cousin loved her extra large coffee, light and sweet, but cancer has stolen that pleasure as well, changing her taste buds, giving her reflux and basically making many of her beloved foods and drinks abhorrent to her. I look down at my cup in disgust. How can I enjoy when she cannot?

Sighing, I take another sip. What good will denying myself do for my cousin? Doctors can’t seem to do anything for her? Being a good person hasn’t made a difference. It’s just coffee, I argue. Just like it was just a dog walk. But really, they are what make up a life. The simple pleasures. The stuff we take for granted is of course what matters most.

I will see her in a couple of hours. Sit on the floor by her bed and entertain her with meaningless stories that hopefully bring a small smile and distraction. I will offer her food and treats that she might take a bite or two of before her stomach decides it can tolerate no more. We will talk about the Netflix show I encouraged her to watch (Offspring!) and escape into that world for a while. I will listen to her fear and worry and do my best to soothe. I’ve been told it’s not my strong point. My own worry has a way of leaking into my face, but I am practicing in front of a mirror just like her best friend instructed.

There are no answers, small comforts, and a lot of pain for the sick and suffering. Life loses all its flavor and sparkle as loved ones watch helplessly. Angrily. Miserably. But with no choice in the matter, we must keep going. Listen closely. Hug tightly. Laugh freely. And love fiercely.

While my boys traverse the waves, riding the choppy and the serene, I continue to sip my coffee and think about my cousin as the more turbulent waters rush all around.

Alisa Schindler is a mom of three boys and wife to Mr. Baseball. She schleps children, burns cupcakes and writes essays that have been featured online at the New York Times, Washington Post, Kveller, Good Housekeeping and Northwell Health’s The Well, among others. In her spare time, she writes sexy, twisty fiction novels. Find out more about her at alisaschindler.com.

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Statement on Black Lives Matter and support for social change

Guest Posts, memories

Letter From A Friend

February 14, 2022
coffee

Before work I’d stop at Grey Dog Cafe for iced coffee and a morning muffin sprinkled with blueberries that stained my fingers inky purple. There was never a good place to stand, but it was cozy and the line moved fast.

I was a regular who noticed the other regulars, especially the woman in the velvet technicolor blazer who wrote in a pencil on a yellow legal pad most every day. I imagined her to be a writer or maybe an award-winning therapist. She was single, I thought, and a very good aunt, one who sends you books in the mail, and slips you a $20 for a cab home after taking you to dinner at a really good Indian restaurant.

I lived so much in my head back then.  I made up lively stories about the people pressed against me on the subway, the people in coffee shops, the people I passed on the street.

But my neighbors? Instead of meeting them, I scurried into my apartment each time I heard their palms press into their doorknobs. I lived in the same apartment in Astoria for five years, and I never met the people who shared my walls.

I should have knocked. I should have brought them brownies. I should have asked them for a book of matches or an egg.

But I never did those things. I stepped into the peaceful loneliness of my apartment at the end of each day; shut out the whole world so I could watch a never-ending loop of Law and Order: SVU. Made a pot of pasta or ordered in thai food. Fell asleep reading a book, cats curled up behind both knees.

Being alone felt like magic. I’d left a no-good relationship with a brilliant man who held himself in the lowest regard. We broke up because he refused to go to the doctor despite having a deep, unsettling pain in his gut for over a year.

“Chuck, I’m giving you six months. Go the doctor or we’re over. Please. I’m too young to be a sort-of widow,” I said.

On the final day of the sixth month I asked him if he’d made an appointment.

“Seriously? You’re asking me TODAY? I need more time, I’ll do it,” he said, red faced and furious that someone not related to him cared enough to want him to live.

Of course, he never went to the doctor. Of course, I had to leave.

Now here I was, alone with Benson and Stabler and my cats and the loneliness of it all settled on me like a dog’s thunder coat.

“I’ve got to get back home. You know, feed the cats,” I’d say, ducking out of happy hours and birthday parties earlier than most. I had excellent friends, beautiful co-workers, and together we had the kind of fun you have before life’s obligations start grinding you down. But I wanted to be back home, back to the safest place–inside my apartment, inside my head.

Inside my head that coffee shop woman, the writer or therapist with the legal pad and a bowl-sized mug of cappuccino, was a friend. Sometimes she’d smile at me. We’d make eye contact. She’d look appraisingly at my outfit, the green and blue snub-toed cowboy boots, the fluorescent pink hunter’s cap. Were we kindred spirits? Twenty years from now could I be living in Greenwich Village and working out of a bohemian coffee shop decorated with reclaimed wood and hand-painted tables, just like her?

There was a perfect fall morning. The sky was the color of a shack by the sea. The clouds ripe and soft. In my head I ran through a list of things I was grateful for–living alone in an apartment with yellow lemon walls, having a job that was very hard but always exciting, landing in a city like New York with all its wonderful weirdness.

The door was a little sticky that morning at the Grey Dog, and I had to push a little harder than usual to get inside.  I remember smiling, the morning muffins looked especially excellent, my outfit looked especially cute. It was cardigan weather.

On the way out, I stopped to grab a straw and an extra napkin. Coffee shop woman stood up, headed my way, slipped a folded piece of paper into my hand.

She said nothing, but her eyes were so bright before she turned away to sit back in her seat.

My brain lit up like the Broadway marquee.

She wants to be friends! We’re going to be friends! The lady writer / therapist and I are going to be pals and do cool things and this is such a perfect NYC story—

I walked a block away, turned a corner.  The paper, yellow and lined, of course. The message? The damn message.

“I got lap-band surgery and lost 75 pounds. You could do it too. Ask me about it.”

All the brightness in my brain fizzled out. Was she a writer or a therapist? I’d never find out.

After she slipped me that note I never went back to Grey Dog for coffee or morning muffins or anything. It was the scene of a crime, the scene of hopes dashed, and I started going to a coffee truck instead. The man slinging buttered rolls and cups of strong coffee called me beautiful and knew my name. If I looked sad, he slipped me a free jelly donut and told me it would be ok.

Rachel Kempster Barry is the author of several books on creativity and kindness.

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Anti-racist resources, because silence is not an option

Guest Posts, poetry

Morning

April 5, 2021
morning

By Eric LaFountain

Slower mornings are so much better than those

track race mornings, when the gun went off and the

sprinting began in a frantic a.m. rush.

I can’t sprint anymore,

I don’t know where that sprinter went,

I prefer if he never returns.

I’ll take my coffee in bed on a Wednesday.

Please don’t rush me or expect a prompt response.

I’m busy smelling the fresh brew now (it has notes of pecan and milk chocolate).

I like resting the warm mug on my naked

stomach and the phrase “mocha java,” the way it sounds

said aloud, how it makes my mouth water.

Are you seriously still trying to reach me?

The deadline has passed and everything is okay.

Our world is closed, our world opened, our world closed again.

I barely noticed.

Coffee beans should be oily, fragrant, decadent.

And the morning should be wide open and roomy to enjoy all of those sips.

I already told you I’m not on your timeline.

I already told you I’m not up to task.

You’re too loud, and I don’t like the sound of your voice.

It’s a bus fume voice, there are so many

bus fume voices, bad for the health, bad to be near and breathe in.

Someone told me once about Hunter-Gatherers, how they only

hunted a couple hours a day, at most, then spent the rest

relaxing in rivers and napping and having sex.

So can’t you see I’m a Hunter-Gatherer?

What’s so hard to understand?

Can we maybe try this again, start over?

Do you like the smell of my coffee?

Would you like to have some and lay in my bed?

Just climb in already, get comfortable.

I’m sorry but I forgot what we were talking about.

I forgot if the world is closed or opened or has closed again.

Eric LaFountain lives and teaches in Miami. His short fiction has appeared in numerous literary journals, including Potomac Review, Jabberwock Review, Hobart, and Pleiades. He’s currently working on a YA novel about an abandoned boy and abandoned cat. You can follow him on Instagram @eric.lafountain.

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Anti-racist resources, because silence is not an option

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