3.17.03 coffee

I'm not sentimental about any of the places we have lived. I enjoyed aspects of life in Olympia, Portland, even Shelton. But I'm too pragmatic to pine for old times, to let my brain fog over with nostalgia.

Except for one thing. I really enjoyed going out to coffee.

In Olympia, Byron liked the Smithfield. It was okay, but not very kid friendly. I took my daughter to the Asterisk and she used to place her own orders before she was tall enough to see the top of the counter. She knew everyone who worked there. We have friends even now from those coffee shops - Leslie from the Smithfield, Pam from the Asterisk. Cliff too; we had dinner with him in New York. His brother lived near us in Portland.

Our new friend across the street looked familiar, and we couldn't place her, until we realized she used to work at the Dancing Goat. Amy from the Dolly Ranchers worked there too.

There was no coffee culture in Shelton but we only lived there to be close to my grandmother, who was dying in hospice. I was so upset about losing my grandma I couldn't drink coffee for about a year. Then we moved to Portland.

We lived just off 20th and Clinton, about a block from The Habit. Byron went there every day, and struck up a friendship with Lynn and JJ. That is where he first encountered Gabriel, a young single dad from Colorado. While my daughter was in half-day kindergarten I lurked at the Flying Saucer Cafe. We had our wedding reception there and watched with horror as our wedding showed up on the evening news.

The Flying Saucer is now the Red and Black Collective, and I've done events there a couple of times. The Habit is gone (and I wonder if the terminals are still stored in a basement somewhere?) but Lynn is a really good friend, a kind and helpful person, and I am one of her biggest fans. I couldn't have kept the sites up these many years without her technical assistance and advice.

Gabriel turned up at the co-op and we sat in the hallway together hiding from the normal parents and eventually he went on the Breeder tour, and to Italy with me. He lives in our Portland house now with a woman Byron knows from a tiny alternative high school in the mountains of Colorado. After high school she managed the coffee shop all the kids went to in Denver. Gabriel & Danielle are expecting a baby this spring.

Toward the end of our time in Portland I was the chair of the IPRC board of directors. I met this nice guy named Keith, and after our terms ended he and his friend Robin opened a coffee shop, Crowsenberg's Half and Half, right next to Reading Frenzy. Byron took a job with a start-up and they moved in to rooms across from and above the IPRC. Byron had coffee downstairs every day and I stopped in whenever I could.

Keith listened to us complaining about housing prices when we decided to move, and said his friend might be willing to sell. We called her, drove up, and bought the house we live in now.

Just about every good thing in my life: friends, true love, work, fun times with my kids, are all in some way connected to coffee.

I haven't found a coffee shop I enjoy in Seattle. I haven't looked. Maybe I'm too old now, maybe I feel that I have enough in my life.

But I do miss those old places.

share: facebook|stumbleupon|twitter