My friend Rose and I meet each week to write. Not anything in particular. We each have dozens of writing projects going at any given moment, and the simple act of meeting keeps us each accountable, moving forward.
This morning, though, each of us was feeling a little loopy and unfocused. She’d been up ‘til 2 a.m. watching the Perseids with a friend who’d popped into town from afar, and I had no excuse beyond middle age inertia.
It didn’t help that our schedules were such that we had to meet early, before our favorite café opened. Instead, we were forced to go to the only other coffee shop in town, the one we’ve taken to calling Mediocritea.
It doesn’t matter how many times I go in, they never remember that I’ve been there before, and explain to me each time that the tea bags are around the corner, and my order will be called from over–here they point to their right–there. I want to roll my eyes, but instead I smile and nod.
Rose is there already, her “coffee for here” in a tall, paper cup.
“This coffee is terrible,” she says, her face puckering as she takes a sip.
My “tea for here” is similarly awful.
And it’s noisy in here. Too many people. No ambience, just a bunch of tables packed into a small space. But the walls are a nice color, making it seem like it might be hip and cool.
We chat for a few minutes, and realize that our preferred coffee shop opens in a mere 15 minutes.
“What if we just move over there? We can write for 15 minutes, and then go.”
“You mean, we can… prose hop?”
And so we do. We take our terrible “for here” coffee and tea, exit the building, and head for the trashcan on the corner.
“How can you screw up hot water and a tea bag?” Rose asks.
It’s two blocks to the other shop, and we feel like naughty schoolgirls, fleeing the one for the other.
The minute we walk in, we both relax.
“This was such a good idea.”
Everything about it is better. They know us here, though they’ve been open only a couple of months. There’s a comfy couch and chairs, and a patio shaded by a grape arbor and sunflowers.
We claim a low table topped by colorful Mexican tiles, prop our feet up, and laugh. Neither of us would have done this twenty years ago. Something about feeling the need to see something through, to be polite, to finish what we’ve started.
My tea comes in a funky teal mug, with red ink: a line drawing of a droopy tabby cat being lifted by a helium balloon tied around its middle. “Light and Sweet” it says.
We are light and sweet.
❤️