Been making a humble Thursday morning practice of popping in the coffee shop down the road before work.
Just to stand in line for a cortado and sit for a few minutes.
In between the standing and sitting, I always seem to find something to fill my cup.
This past Thursday there wasn’t much of a line, so I stepped to the front, ordered, and skooched to the left to wait.
The waiting area’s directly in front of where the barista prepares the orders.
I’m careful not to stare.
But I do try to catch a glimpse when they’re doing the pouring.
I find all artful pourers mesmerizing.
The person working Thursday is new-ish.
Been there maybe a couple months.
Don’t know her name.
Just her smile.
She began with the requisite two shots of espresso.
Then moved to the milk.
I’m always curious to see if a barista trusts in gravity and surface tension to do their jobs … and fills the cup beyond its edge.
It’s always magic to me to bear witness to how the molecules grab on to one another, and keep each other from flowing away and spilling.
I find a hope in that.
Like nature’s just waiting for us to learn from its example.
I’ve noticed that some baristas favor the control of holding the cup in one hand to bring the spout closer … while others place the cup on the counter to keep a steady target.
The delicacy of the draw gets me every time.
The mere idea of painting with a brush that only ever gets so close to its canvas.
Seems prayerful to me.
Any distance between source and vessel requires a measure of faith.
I’ve learned that the precise amount required has little to do with how great or small the distance.
Hers was one fluid motion into the countered cup.
But then, she did this thing.
Post-pour, she reached for a spoon.
I watched as she used it to gently skooch some of the foam where she wanted it to go.
My immediate thought was that maybe things initially didn’t turn out the way she wanted.
As she skimmed the surface, she cupped her empty left hand parallel to her right … as if protecting a flickering match from the wind.
Her left hand had no practical purpose, other than maybe just to let the right know it was rooting for it.
By which I mean it may have had the most important job of all.
Satisfied, she put the spoon down and ushered my cup forward to let me know it was ready.
“I’ve never seen anyone do that … with the spoon,” I confessed.
“I do it all the time,” she said. “That’s my move.”
So, she had made no mistake.
She just wasn’t done moving mountains.
I asked her her name.
“Jaye,” she said.
“We’ll call it the ‘Jaye,’” I said.
“Aww, thank you,” she smiled, also a signature move.
It was only then that I looked down … to see that she had used the spoon to crack a tiny heart open.
By which I mean she used the spoon to crack my tiny heart open.
Whenever I am asked to meet with a new employee, I always start with the most important question.
I mean THE most important question.
I preface it by letting the person know that I’m about to ask them the most important question that they will be asked that day.
Possibly, the most important question they will be asked all week.
I let them know in advance that the question is cosmic in its scope.
Then I hit ’em with it.
“What is the greatest pizza of all time?”
I then take a minute to make sure they fully understand the question’s magnitude.
“In your expert opinion, across the hundreds of assemblages of crust, sauce and toppings you have experienced in the entirety of your illustrious, pizza-eating career … what is the GOAT?”
As they deliberate, I invite them to give thought to why.
What is it about it that makes it the greatest of all time?
The ingredients?
Where or how the ingredients are sourced? Is it the style? The type of crust? The manner in which it’s prepared? Is it the individuals who make it? The ambience in which they experience it? The location where it’s located? Is it the company they experience it with? Perhaps it’s the time in their life that they first encountered it?
Over the years, I’ve asked the question at least a hundred times.
Everyone answers differently, but they all have one thing in common.
The way their face lights up when they tell me.
You should see how such love lives on their faces.
__
So, I’m waiting out a Sunday late-morning flight delay at the Kansas City airport yesterday.
Young fella sitting next to me sees me holding a small print of a cat in a cowboy costume that some friends (who know me well) gave me that morning.
Asks me about it.
I tell him.
Then he asks me where I’m going.
I answer and, out of politeness, ask him the same.
He tells me he’s going to Paris for 82 days, to intern for a ‘church-planting’ organization … scattering seeds in France.
Couple minutes later, he’s asking me if I know Jesus, and whether I’ve accepted him as the only way to salvation.
In so many words.
I mean, soooo many words.
Meanwhile, the voice in my head starts audibly exhaling in discomfort, “Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…” while rubbing the bridge of its metaphorical nose.
I’m just a guy admiring a print of a cat in a cowboy costume here.
Meanwhile my concerned neighbor is talking all about sin and eternity … with much conviction.
Which I respect both the act and substance of.
He’s going to make a great intern.
Says that our days are not guaranteed. Anything can happen.
“This might be the last flight we ever take,” he says, gesturing to the door to the jetway.
I don’t disagree.
He mentions that Jesus is coming back.
Soon.
I suppress the urge to mention that history is littered with a lot of humans who over-estimated their gifts for guesstimating that particular arrival time.
He starts peppering me with a bunch of questions.
And keeps pressing me for a verbal … like a flight attendant prompting an exit row passenger.
Meanwhile, all I can hear is Paul whispering in my ear “… with gentleness and respect.”
I genuinely don’t want to be disrespectful.
For all I know, God might be eavesdropping on his intern.
I also don’t want to get deep … meaning the granularity of it.
But I do want to get deep … meaning the heart of it.
And I know that if I choose the latter, he’s just going to want to further litigate the former.
But I couldn’t help myself.
So I answered him … by saying that I have a wise friend who knows more chapter and verse than I ever will.
And that the wisest thing I have ever heard him utter isn’t a Bible verse.
When someone asked him a question he didn’t have an answer for, my wise friend said that he wasn’t sure.
And added, “I’m OK with God knowing more than I do.”
Which pretty much sums up my faith right now.
It’s taken me a while to get to this cruising altitude.
I can’t tell you exactly how close I am to any destination.
There are lots of clouds when I look up.
I’m not even sure how accurate my heading is … as I tend to overestimate the scale of things.
I’m just trying to hold things steady enough to eventually give me a better vantage point.
Which is no small accomplishment, given my fear of heights and poor sense of direction.
But I do have some people in my life right now who are generous in sharing their coordinates with me. More experienced navigators who have logged a lot more miles, spent more time with the map, and seen a lot more of the world than I have. Best of all, they are generous in sharing the detours and emergency landings they’ve made … in hopes that I either avoid, or at the very least, take different ones.
God bless bound-for-Paris Josoo (“rhymes with ‘tofu’” as he introduced himself), but I don’t think I gave him the exit row answer he and his pilot were hoping for.
But his soon-to-be-summer employer should know that it wasn’t for a lack of intention on his part.
After a few minutes, I needed to detangle, so I got up to stand where the boarding lines were about to form.
I confess to you that I hoped that neither God nor United Airlines sat us next to each other on the plane.
But sitting and sifting here, though … I kinda’ regret praying for that.
Because I just thought of something I wished I would’ve asked Josoo.
I would have asked him to talk to me about love.
About love that rejoices in truth.
A love that always protects.
Always trusts.
A love that in spite of everything … still hopes and perseveres.
I’d ask him to talk to me about love so Great.
Love that never fails … even when all other prophecies cease, all tongues still, and all other knowledge passes away.
A love whose planes never run late.
___
By which I mean … I would have liked to ask him The Most Important Question.
At least the most important one anyone would ask him that day, if not over the next 82.
I would’ve asked him about the greatest pizza of all time.
I’d take a good minute to make sure he fully understood the question.
So I could learn what, in his expert, pizza-eating opinion makes it the greatest … out of all the hundreds of combinations that he’s experienced in his illustrious, pizza-eating career.
Just so I could see how love lives on his face, and feel how it lives in his heart.
Trust me … I would rejoice in learning of his personal relationship with pizza.
Which would expand my humble understanding of how crust, sauce and toppings can go together.
And all I know for certain is that he would answer the same question differently than anyone else I’ve ever asked.
And that, by the end, I would likely be hungry to experience pizza the way he experiences pizza.
And if the Spirit was really moving within me, I might even ask him his perspective when it comes to anchovies.
Not to convince him, mind you.
Just to see if we had any common ground there.
All of which to say … I’m no theologian.
I’m content knowing that if there is a God … she probably looks at me the same way I look at prints of cats in cowboy costumes.
But it’s hard for me to imagine that she cares all that much that I don’t like crust.
My wife Karry doesn’t mind.
I let her have mine.
Heck, maybe it makes God happier to see us sharing.
And I would never deign to speak for her, but I imagine that if God made us in her image, then she probably autonomically smiles when she sees how our faces light up when talking about the greatest pizza of all-time.
Heck, she’s probably just waiting for us to ask her The Important Question.
So she can reply, in so many words, “Have you ever tried it with the Jesus sauce?”
So that we can see how a love that hopes all things … lives on her face.
After driving the six hours home from Philly last Sunday, I went over to the high school track … just to give my legs a stretch.
My son got there a few minutes before me, fresh from running some errands.
When we are at the track together, we run separately.
He’s much faster. Keeps track of his times and such.
Me … I just go for the medicine of it.
The track was empty when we arrived, but after a bit I spied a couple walking down the hill. From a distance I recognized a retired teacher from the middle school. I see her walking at the cemetery sometimes too, always with a spring in her step, a smile and a kind word.
All of which she possessed when she taught. Both of our kids had her for reading.
Whenever I see Mrs. Labella my memory goes back to our son’s first year of middle school … when Karry and I signed up for parent teacher conferences.
That was … what? A dozen years ago now? Thirteen?
I say this lovingly, but Peter was a bit of a handful back then … at least from our side of the equation.
Whatever internal motor was responsible for his initiative … revved very low.
Most of his homework got done with Karry’s foot in close proximity to his keister.
His default with most things was to expend the least amount of effort required. He had dual gifts for pushing buttons and refusing to admit any wrongdoings. We often said he would make a great lawyer someday.
He also exercised great agency over his energy and attention, which was often at odds with where the world wished he would direct them.
He was never in any great hurry.
His internal clock just kept time differently.
When we met his middle school teachers for the first time, we expected to come back with homework on what we could do better at home to help him succeed in class.
I’m not sure, but I think Mrs. Labella was first.
Peter wasn’t much of a reader then … or now.
Didn’t inherit my English major genes, though he does have a genuine love for language. He just has always preferred working with his hands. Loves making and fixing things.
Reading and writing? Not so much.
I remember Karry and I bracing for impact when we first walked into Mrs. Labella’s meticulously curated classroom.
We were indeed stunned by what we heard.
She said how wonderful it was having Peter in class.
How well-behaved he was.
How much she appreciated his participation.
We were like, “Um, our son?”
He didn’t even like to read.
We were kind of speechless.
I don’t remember Mrs. Labella’s specific words, just that she saw a light in him … that we were too close to see for ourselves … and reflected it back to us.
I now know that those were the days when we — or at least I — spent way too much time squeezing the parenting handlebars way too tightly.
As Mrs. Labella chatted with us, I remember appreciating being in the presence of a person who’d spent years in the company of 12- and 13-year-olds, who deeply understood the assignment, and who loved the important and sometimes hard thing she got to do … with exactly who she got to do it with.
Someone who commanded respect, took no b.s. … and was comfortable enough in her own skin to give Grace where and when needed.
In other words, someone who was born to be a teacher.
By contrast, I realized that Karry and I were as new to being parents of a middle schooler as Peter was being a middle schooler.
Maybe we were all doing a little better than we gave ourselves credit for, even if we were collectively a little fidgety in our respective chairs.
The rest of his teachers pretty much said the same thing.
Walking out of the school that night, Karry and I joked that maybe we had a budding actor on our hands. Had ‘em all fooled, he did.
We both knew that wasn’t at all true.
The truer thing was that maybe we were in too much of a hurry with our expectations.
That maybe our parenting motors were in need of revving a little slower.
___
So … fast forward … to last Sunday at the track.
I waved to Mrs. Labella and her husband when I caught up to them.
As I jogged by, she said she appreciated a piece I’d recently written.
For the record, I’m not sure higher praise exists for a writer than to get a gold star from a middle school reading teacher.
I told her it’s a blessing to have such good things to write about.
I ran on ahead a bit … then felt moved to double-back.
“In the spirit of not assuming,” I said. “That’s my son over there,” pointing Peter out on the other side of the track. “If he didn’t say hello, make sure you say hi when he passes by.”
“I’ll trip him if he doesn’t,” she said … still not an ounce of b.s. in her voice.
I was about three-quarters of the way through my next lap when, up ahead of me, I saw this.
My 25-year-old son and his middle school reading teacher.
It filled my heart full to see that he broke from his pace to walk with them.
Turns out, his internal clock has always understood time just fine.
They took a good full lap together.
I don’t know what they talked about.
Only that they each had a smile and a kind word for the other.
I imagine he told her what he’s doing now.
I imagine that she told him she’s not surprised one bit.
I found myself slowing my pace behind them … careful not to get in the way.
Just grateful for the medicine of it … in no great hurry myself anymore.
Paused for a coffee on my way to a morning medical appointment.
Got in line behind a guy in the middle of picking out a bunch of stuff.
“Gimme a couple of those, and one of those,” he said, pointing at the pile of yesterday’s pepperoni rolls they keep on the counter, and the breakfast burritos warming in a case next to the register.
Looked to me like he was being spontaneously thoughtful. Like it had just occurred to him to pick up some goodies to surprise whoever his peeps were.
I’m a sucker for spontaneous thoughtfulness.
After confirming that he meant ‘two’ for ‘a couple,’ the young person behind the counter reached for the pepperoni rolls.
After she picked one up, I heard her say softly to herself, “Oh, that one’s small,” then watched as she put the pepperoni roll she had in her hand back … and pull another out from the bottom of the pile.
The guy didn’t see her do it.
Had already skooched to the side to wait for his stuff.
Struck me as both the smallest thing and the biggest thing.
When it was my turn in line, I told her I appreciated how she put the small one back.
She smiled.
“Yeah, I can’t help it,” she said. “I always think about what I’d want, you know?”
I wanted so much to say, “Me too!”
Because that’s how I think about things … though I don’t sell yesterday’s pepperoni rolls for a living.
“Even when I pick something out of the case, I try and look for the ‘good’ ones,” she added.
What I loved about how she put it is that I knew exactly what she meant, without having any idea exactly what she meant.
Just that it had nothing to do with whether anybody else noticed.
I don’t know why something so small that wasn’t meant to be seen moved me so much.
I mean … if they keep sellin’ like yesterday’s hot cakes, somebody might eventually get the pepperoni runt, … so does it even matter?
I dunno.
Maybe because it’s been my experience that how you do the small things is how you do the big things.
Or maybe I just need reminded sometimes that there are others out there trying to look for the good ones, too.
Ran into a friend at the coffee shop a couple weeks ago.
At the end of our brief chat, he invited me to a men’s Bible study he leads on Sunday mornings.
Said they’d be starting Second Timothy first of the month.
Even though it’s been awhile since I stepped foot in church, I said yes.
My friend is good light.
So, this morning I found myself gathered around a table with seven other guys.
My friend began by giving some context around Paul’s second letter to his friend Timothy.
Asked if we had any questions before diving us deeper.
I had one.
I asked if it was known whether Paul had any specific expectation, when writing to his friend, that Timothy might share the letter?
Or, did Paul intended his letter ‘only’ for Timothy?
My friend said he didn’t really know. Asked the rest of the group.
They weren’t sure, either.
Wow, I said out loud.
Suddenly found myself deeply moved.
By the humble act of a person who knew they didn’t have much time left, writing a letter of encouragement — from prison, no less — to someone he loved dearly.
No expectations of shares or likes.
Pretty remarkable when you think about it, I said aloud.
Which part, specifically? A voice at the table asked.
I mean … the fact of us reading a letter from almost two thousand years ago … written halfway across the world from the church basement where we were gathering … that was aimed at encouraging a single person.
Just, you know, the miracle of that.
Prompted the person to my right to mention that recently he helped get a car started over at the local college for a student who had broken down. Said that afterwards, she sent him just the most wonderful letter. How it moved him so much that he took a photo of the card to share it with some folks he knew.
He quoted a couple lines from it that were still on his heart, so that it could be on our hearts, too.
I told him that he made me grateful I asked the question … for the gift of him sharing the story of his letter.
Ten minutes into a Bible study about a book we hadn’t even cracked open yet … and already a sermon on the power of encouraging one another in trying times.
Anemochory.
That’s what nature calls it.
The dispersal of seeds by the wind.
“For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God.”
That’s what Paul calls it.
“We can’t change anything, but we can influence everything.”
That’s what the social scientist Robert Cialdini calls it.
Paul could not change the circumstances of his imprisonment. Of his impending death.
But he could send a letter encouraging his friend.
Regardless of our circumstances, we have agency over how we respond.
Of the energy we put into the world.
Paul’s letter to Timothy encourages us — to remember that encouragement is always an option.
Sitting around a table in a church basement grateful for asking questions, I am reminded that by encouraging one, others might be encouraged, too.
Disclaiming that I’m operating sans coffee this morning (boil water advisory in Washington County, which is so on-brand for a week and a world that could use some disinfecting), so please forgive any typos and dissents into incoherent, rambling despair ….
Broke my broken heart this week to read that Bezos eliminated the sports department at the Washington Post.
Poof.
As a former second-rate sports writer who knew enough to know what good sports writing looked like, knew enough to know his Murrays from his Boswells from his Angells from his Alboms from his Colliers from his Jenkins, knew enough to know that fields of play give professionals and teenagers the same Shakespearean stage to live out most of life’s tragedies and comedies, sometimes fairly, sometimes unfairly, but always truly, and that in the hands of the right deadline saint, the record could show as much, who knew enough to clip, underline, asterisk, and scribble down golden turns of phrases like collecting seashells for keeping hoping some of it might rub off, who knew enough to know that when he read Roger Kahn’s Boys of Summer that one summer that good sports writers were just good writers who happened to write sports, who knew enough to know that the local versions of those deadline saints who I got to watch and read up close were (and are) just as great, and even greater for shining and reflecting their good light without big spotlights, who knew enough to inhale the scent of a new edition like bread come midnight fresh off the the press before proofing it for the later editions, who knew enough to know that the smudge on your fingertips after reading was what made for a sacred act, who knew enough to know that tomorrow those pages would be lucky to line bird cages before being tossed in the trash so don’t get too full of yourself, who knew enough to know that it was one thing to hit it out of the print park once, but could you do it again tomorrow? And what about the next day? Who knew enough to know that love and commitment are proven only in the act of showing up again and again and playing hurt to stare down a blank page and a deadline, who knew enough to know that to love something with your whole heart is to miss it with whatever’s left of your whole heart when it’s gone, who knew enough to know that when his mid-50s self stumbled into that Waynesburg coffee shop last summer and saw they had a take-one-leave-one book shelf, he reached for the cover-stained, out-of-print edition of Sports illustrated Great Baseball Writing like he was rescuing it from a burning building …
… which he was.
Who knows enough to know that it would be hypocritical this morning to ask if he knows anyone who subscribes to the Atlantic and would they mind sending him a PDF of Sally (who did it as well as any ever did) Jenkins’ elegy, “You Can’t Kill Swagger” published a couple days ago … and that, in the asking lies the blood, like ink stains on my hands for not wanting to scale the paywall for a whole damn subscription.
While scrolling my Monday in-box last week, I was gifted language for something I have felt but never had words for.
When I stumble across such treasure, I try and make a point to write the word down in my journal.
I think of it like picking up seashells along a beach.
The word came courtesy of Creative Mornings, whose January theme came courtesy of their Tehran chapter.
I’ve copied their explanation here. Don’t think they’d mind.
کورسو or Koorsoo (pronounced Koor·Soo) is a Farsi word meaning a glimmer of hope.
“In our darkest hours, when everything seems to have dimmed, sometimes a light remains—not bright, not certain, but real. That is Koorsoo—a faint glimmer of hope that dares to survive. Koorsoo is not about triumph or clarity; it is about the fragile yet unwavering light that keeps us going. A glance, a memory, a word—small things that prevent collapse. It represents the quiet resilience of those who continue in spite of the weight, who believe without guarantee. In a world that often normalizes despair, Koorsoo is a rebellion—soft, but profound. It reminds us: even the smallest spark matters.”
My Monday morning — by which I mean my January — needed that reminder …
… almost but not quite as much as I needed caffeine driving up Main Street Thursday morning before work.
Anymore, I find my days need some back-up … which is among the reasons I collect seashells … metaphorically keep them in my pockets … so I can run my hands over their contour to remember, to remind myself.
Sometimes when I get to the small coffee shop when it opens, the sun’s still low enough in the sky to bathe the interior bright.
After giving my eyes a couple seconds to adjust, I noticed their humble logo reflected on an interior wall, crisp as a projection.
A fragile yet unwavering light.
I asked Fiona if they knew when they built the place that the sun would reflect like that, or if that was just a happy accident.
She wasn’t sure, but said it’s her favorite thing.
If we only knew how our light reflects sometimes.
After paying for my double cortado to go, I handed her a little extra cash for a pay-it-forward.
Spoke aloud the names aloud of a handful of humans who had recently reserved some kind thoughts in their day for me.
If we only knew how our light reflects sometimes.
Sitting here with my Sunday morning … a new month turned over … still needing reminders … still collecting sea shells … still remembering the importance of sharing our koorsoo with the world around us.
Left the house yesterday morning to meet my sister for coffee.
There are few more lovely reasons to leave the house on a Saturday morning.
Figured I’d swing by the post office first to pick up some stamps.
Planned to write my daughter her weekly postcard after having coffee with my big sister.
No line when I got inside.
Saw Maria standing behind the counter … which made me smile.
Maria’s worked at the post office for 28 years, if I remember correctly.
She told me last time I picked up a lasagna from her.
Not at the post office.
At her tender restaurant A la Maria’s, on LeMoyne, where she spends her weekday evenings … lovingly making her Mom’s old Italian recipes.
Maria’s place holds a special place in my heart.
When Karry and I got married and moved into the World’s Tiniest Apartment in East Washington, Maria’s mother ran a restaurant out of the basement of her home a couple blocks from us.
In our early Kraft-Mac-and-Cheese-Can-of-Peas-for-Dinner days, Paesano’s was our one monthly splurge.
Saturday night.
If the weather was nice we’d walk.
It was BYOB so we made a ritual of picking up a $10 bottle of wine.
Made sure we were in our seats by 7 o’clock, so we could watch X-Files re-runs on the big TV that hung in the dining area …
… while slow savoring food made with love from an Italian mother’s kitchen.
We’d take our time walking our full bellies back home — the next day’s leftover lunch in my left hand, Karry’s hand in my right.
Everything my Saturday night could ever want back then.
Maria’s lasagna is perfection.
Architectural is the best way to describe it.
Sharp corners. Rectilinear. Towering.
Don’t know how she does it.
Every lasagna we’ve ever made at home comes out of the pan (deliciously) gloopy.
Maria’s could serve as a tornado shelter.
Comes with about a 1/2 inch of standing red sauce pooling in the bottom of the to go container.
Every time I get home and crack open the styrofoam box, Pavarotti sings ‘La donna è mobile’ in my head.
Comes with two thin slices of Italian bread, essential sponges for sopping up every last drop from the plate when you’ve sadly run out of lasagna.
When I put my sopped-clean-post-lasagna plate in the dish washer, the other dishes are like, “I think you meant to put this back in the cabinet.”
So it should come as no surprise how it made me smile to see Maria behind the counter at the post office yesterday morning.
“Miss Maria,” I greeted.
“Mr. Riddell.”
“Postcard stamps?” I asked.
“Cleaned out. Election folks bought ‘em all up.”
“Awwww. Really?”
Asked her when they might get more in. She said they’re on order, from Kansas.
“They send them regular mail … so, who knows?”
Coming from a post office person, the “Who knows?” struck me as funny.
She said I could try the McMurray store. They have everything there.
I thanked her for letting me know, and exhaled defeatedly, as I didn’t have the time nor inclination for a special trip.
Was just about to say out loud that my visit wasn’t in vain, though, since I got to see her …
… when Maria interjected.
“Otherwise, you’d have to go two busses and some grapes.”
“Uh …. I’m sorry, what?”
“To make up the 61 cents,” she said.
Pre-caffeinated, I wasn’t following at all.
She pulls out her drawer, takes out a couple packs of stamps.
Starts to do math.
Explains the busses are 28 cents …
“So two of those …. plus a five cent stamp,” she says, holding up a pack of grape stamps.
“So you’d need a lot of stamps,” she chuckled.
“Wait …,” I said. “Postcard stamps are 61 cents?”
“Yep. Regular stamps are 78 cents, post cards are 61.”
I had no idea.
In my mind I thought postcard stamps were like 19 cents.
Sixty-one cents … for such little real estate.
I felt dumb … for having hundreds of post cards at home.
She started to put the booklets back in her drawer, when I interjected.
“I’ll take the busses and grapes,” I said.
“Oh, you want to do that?” she asked.
“Just to get me through today,” I said.
What I meant was that I’d just take a booklet of each as an interim solution.
“Oh, so you just want enough for one?” she asked.
I didn’t think you could do that.
I smiled at the smile on her face as I watched her tearing off a postcard’s worth of individual stamps from their booklets.
“I guess I’m going to have to write smaller,” I said out loud.
She broke apart the three I needed, laid them loose on the counter.
Then an idea popped into her head.
“Here’s what you do ….”
I watched her pick up a bus, peel it off, and carefully lay it across the other bus.
Wasn’t sure what she was doing … maybe just consolidating onto one piece rather than sending me out with three loose stamps?
Then she peeled the grape and surgically laid it across the second bus.
“There …. That’s what you do,” she said.
Proudly.
“Leaves you more room to write,” she said.
Oh.
“So you can lay them across each other like that on the post card?” I asked.
“Yep,” she said. “Only the ‘USA’ needs to be showing.”
And I giggled out loud … like a five-year-old who’d just seen an adult perform magic.
You should see what she does with a lasagna, I’m tellin’ ya.
In the town where I live, there’s a person who will not only let a clueless, pre-caffeinated little brother cobble together a postcard’s worth of stamps … but will take the time to bunch ‘em as tight as the law allows … so he has as much room as possible to write to his daughter about how much he misses her.
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And after just the loveliest visit with my big sister …
… I took out my favorite pen …
… and the postcard I’d plucked special from my massive, impractical inventory …
… took my time writing small and neat …
… doing my best to make every word count …
… with all the reverence I could muster …
… as I imagined a mother might …
… writing down her favorite recipes for posterity.
I don’t remember if it fell across a couple years, or just one.
Don’t remember exactly how old we were. Early 20’s I think.
Don’t remember how often, or how many instances of it there were.
I just know that when Bill would drop Taco Night on the calendar …
… some of us would fast like it was Ramadan.
Mrs. Sochko makin’ tacos.
I remember the first time I attended … popping into the kitchen to say hello and thank you, and noticing she was pan frying the tortillas.
In our house we just opened the box and took the shells out of the plastic bag.
I remember thinking, “What is this sorcery?”
I can’t even remember who all would show up.
Just that there was always a table-full: Bill, his older brother Danny, and Mr. Sochko in their assigned seats, and the rest of us filling in the others.
Looking back I can’t fathom the amount of provisions she must’ve secured in advance.
I mean, the Sochko men and a table full of post-teenage boys.
I don’t remember her ever cutting us off.
If we were still eating, she’d keep making.
The tacos were just the best.
Mortals like me would fill ourselves full and tap out after seven or eight.
Matt was usually good for a couple more.
Bill, Danny and John?
In another league.
I remember one night in particular.
Somewhere north of double digits Bill called it quits.
Danny and John, though, kept goin’.
Defending home court I think Danny took it as a point of pride.
John, skinny as a rail, was simply enjoying himself.
I think Danny tapped out around 14 or so.
Meanwhile John just kept going … and going.
I don’t remember how high he climbed that night.
The number in my head is jumbled, like the way the older boys at Areford playground would keep track of their home runs back in a day.
I only know that John’s performance that night cemented his Taco Night legacy for all time.
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For the record, Taco Night was one of two truly epic happenings hosted at the Sochko residence.
The other: Trivial Pursuit.
With Mr. Sochko.
While all of us enjoyed hanging out with each other, Mr. Sochko was the main attraction whenever we played. Big B we called him (he was a Bill, too).
Though it’s been more than 30 years, mention “TP with Big B,” to any of us post-teenagers and watch the smiles conquer our faces.
It wasn’t just that Mr. Sochko was the wisest person any of us knew.
Oh my gosh he knew so much.
It was how he delighted in knowledge.
The best part of our games was when he’d expound on the answers. I can still picture him peering over his glasses and smiling as he’d elucidate on a topic.
His was the kind of smile that made you lean in as you listened.
The kindest of smiles.
And we were as ravenous for Big B’s wisdom as we were for Mrs. Sochko’s tacos.
Big B kicked our asses pretty much every time.
I mean, he was a wizened citizen of the world playing with boys who didn’t yet know all they didn’t know.
But as I recall his record wasn’t undefeated.
What made that more special was that Mr. Sochko delighted as much in seeing one of us win (for the record, I’m not sure I ever won). In his congratulations he’d share the same generous smile as when he was sharing wisdom.
There’s a wisdom in that, too, now that I think about it.
To win a game of Trivial Pursuit when Big B was at table? Not sure our neighborhood offered higher accomplishment.
For me the common thread between Taco and Trivial Pursuit nights was that, in those moments I knew enough to know that I was in the best company.
My friends.
Bill’s family.
I mean, the best company.
And that knowledge — that wisdom — is as alive and nourishing to me now as when we gathered around Bill’s dining room table.
I know some post-teenage boys — who now know what they don’t know — who would say the same.
And though Mr. and Mrs. Sochko aren’t with us anymore, in my heart it will always be a short walk to Connor Street … to lingering a couple seconds on the front porch before knocking, just to take in the scent of tortillas frying in the pan.
Letters for Maggie 