Category Archives: saturdays

Postcards, saturdays

Arriving ….

My friend Doug texted me Thursday, which triggered the following exchange. 

I was grateful to Doug for giving me something to look forward to. 

Actually, two things. 

First and foremost, the delight of his company … the gift of picking up the conversation we began when we met as drummers our freshman year at Waynesburg College. 

Secondly, for the gift of the arriving. 

Ever since April who cuts my hair closed her shop on High Street, I’ve missed driving to Waynesburg every fourth Saturday morning.  

I miss driving through Washington just as it’s just waking up and hopping on Interstate 79. 

I don’t take 79 the whole way to Waynesburg, though. 

I fall in love at the Ruff Creek exit.  

By the time I see the sign announcing two miles to Ruff Creek, I am almost giddy. After the exit’s abrupt stop sign, I ease past the gas station on the left and the Church on the right where the cop sat that one time. 

Confirming the coast is clear, I politely punch it and take the two-lane roller coaster climb of a hill as if it’s the roller coaster itself, my one and only chance to clear any slow pokes content with letting life and me pass them by, so that by the top … the only thing in front of me are two lanes irresistibly wide open and waiting … the juiciest Jane Mansfield stretch of swerves and curves in all of Greene County. 

Cue angel chorus. 

Three sets of gently undulating left and right curves carved in an incline …  tempting me and the GTI to a little Saturday morning orneriness. 

At the first left, I leave the right lane and visit the passing lane, following the arc of the bend, and, as long as there are no other cars in sight, swing all the way back into the right as the road snakes. 

Since the hill’s not quite done, I keep my foot on the gas so I can feel the pull into the curve until it releases me into the next left … and then gently back again into the far right. 

By the third left, the sequence is doing the good work of my morning coffee. All of it taking less than a minute. 

The loveliest little moment of aliveness. 

The only-every-four-week sequence made it precious. Something to look forward to. 

Something I’ve missed. 

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Saturday’s reminder of which was almost but not quite as good as the big bear hug Doug and I greeted each other with, before hunkering down in our cushy red booth.

After sharing my gratitude with Doug for his invitation, for the delight of his company, and the gift in the pilgrimage, we were deep into catching up on family, music, and books when he interrupted me. 

He: “Still looking for your pay it forward?” 

Me: “Yes!”

He: “An older couple just came in and sat down.” 

We called our server over, who was more than happy to conspire with us. 

“I’m going over to take their order right now.”

I stole a glance out of the corner of my eye. 

Older married couple out for Saturday breakfast. 

Late 60’s, maybe 70s. I’m a bad guesser. 

I overheard the husband order Double Meat for his breakfast platter, which made me smile. 

A man after my Dad’s quadruple-bypassed heart, I thought to myself.  

I confessed to Doug that something about older couples always melts me. 

Told him about being at the coffee shop last Saturday as a couple regulars I’ve seen before took the table next to me. It was freezing outside, so they were all bundled up. Kept their toboggans on the whole time. 

They were adorable.

I wasn’t eavesdropping, but sitting next to them, I couldn’t help but notice. 

They talked the whole time. 

Genuine conversation. 

Asked questions of the other. 

Not a phone in sight. 

Made each other laugh on more than one occasion. 

When they left, I asked Nicole, who does the baking and who I heard call them by name, whether they were just friends or ….

“They’re married,” she confirmed. “They are just the sweetest.”

I said aloud how I hoped to live long enough to be an old couple who keeps their toboggans on while sipping their Saturday morning coffee.  

 I shared the above with Doug as we resumed losing ourselves in the swerves and curves of our conversation.

Asking questions of the other. 

Making each other laugh on more than one occasion.

‘Til it was time to get on with our Saturdays.

When we got to the register to pay our bills, another customer was waiting for a to go order. I noticed she was wearing a Dairy Queen shirt. 

I also noticed that the older couple had gotten up to leave, too, and were heading in our direction. 

The wife had a lot of difficulty walking, so they were taking their time, her husband gently holding her arm as they made their way. 

They chatted while they took the time she needed. 

I apprehended that it wasn’t an easy choice for them to decide to go out for breakfast.

They probably don’t do it as often as they used to.

Which maybe made it something they looked forward to this week.

I imagined that their years together have taught them something of arrivings, too.  

I melted in place. 

When they got near the register, we and the DQ person stepped aside to let them pass between us — a humble Saturday morning honor guard — as the husband helped his wife to the restroom. 

It took a minute for them to pass between us. Enough time for the husband to notice the DQ logo on the girl’s shirt, too. 

“Peanut buster parfait,” he said, and smiled as he went past. 

I hi-fived him in my head. 

That was Dad’s favorite, too.

Standing in line with my friend at the register, waiting to pay our bills at the Bob Evans on a Saturday morning. 

The loveliest little moment of aliveness. 

Cue angel chorus.

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Fathers and Sons, saturdays, The Girls

… after WOW after ….

Visited Longwood Gardens (just south of Philly) with Karry and Emma last Saturday. It’s in the category of places I would never choose to visit of my own volition, so am grateful to be carried along in the current of their enthusiasms. It may be the most beautiful place I’ve ever visited. I know this to be true based on the number of times I said WOW as an involuntary response. Been thinking since about how the WOWs were exactly the same size whether I was stepping back to look up at a sinewy redwood gathering to its greatness, leaning in to inhale a climbing rose’s secrets, or riveted in place listening to a catbird singing Saturday morning opera.

The place is sprawling, and there was a moment where Karry and Em headed to the conservatory (and its greenhouse of a thousand WOWs), while I went to track down a waterfall we’d seen only at a distance. Traced a canopied path (WOW) to a small landing a few feet from the middle of the waterfall, where I found an empty rocking chair.

So I sat and listened for a hundred years, by which I mean almost long enough. 

Twenty-four hours later I’d exchanged the rocking chair for my backseat nook in Karry’s Jeep, where I was comfortably crammed for the long pilgrimage home so Em could finally begin savoring her summer.  We’d either grossly over-estimated the Jeep’s storage capacity, or grossly under-estimated our daughter’s belongings. Or both. On our way outta town, they paused so I could enjoy a Father’s Day bagel and lox for the ride. I tuned into a radio program just as the interviewees were referencing Harry James, who was my Dad’s inspiration on trumpet growing up. The Universe’s serendipity game is indeed strong. 

I was as comfy and content as a rocking chair by a waterfall. 

Just wanted to bookmark a Father’s Day weekend that pretty much perfectly summed up the gig. 

Carried on the current of their enthusiasms to places beyond my capacity to even imagine. Involuntary WOWs everywhere, if you only remember to look up, lean in, and listen. Grateful for the small wedge still reserved for me in the back seat of their adventures. 

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saturdays

Sometimes a Place …

This is why people linger. Sometimes a place asks you to stay, to not rush anywhere, that it’s warm, and there’s the tap dancing water, and the powder blue sky, and they had the second floor to themselves. Josie felt that if anyone else came up there she would drive them away, she would throw a knife. This was now their home.

Heroes of the Frontier, Dave Eggers

Upstairs, the counter area is still very much holiday bustling, dense with people small business Saturday shopping, come for their caffeine. So sardine packed when I arrived, I had to stand in the other room while waiting for Emma to make me her perfect Saturday morning cappuccino. Upon collecting her offering, I walked through the crowded main room, all the way to the back, unlatched the gate, and went downstairs … which (exhale) I found empty and alone as a secret, as it usually is on Saturday mornings. All old stone walls and tables perfect and patiently waiting for customers who either don’t know they exist, or give the latched gate too much respect, or are just content with the quite content-able upstairs. I drop anchor in my favorite booth, the third one to the right along the wall. Put in my earbuds and summon Keith Hines on KCSM, just coming on for his 6 a.m. shift from the Bay Area, to quiet the din of upstairs and the world at large. Plug in my laptop. Pull out my journal and the Dave Eggers book that I have fallen madly in love with since Thanksgiving plucking it from the full City Lights brown paper bag that sits like a treasure chest on my bookshelf. Take a picture, which is to say a prayer, in reverence, commemorating the blessed gift of a Saturday coffee shop morning in the good company of jazz, a perfect book, and the blank page. Slow draw that first glorious sip, which is to say Amen, feeling it warm all the way down ….

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