Living Room Cafe
Leather covered armchairs, red velvet couch, chipped and stained tables, a large cheap painting of a tall ship sailing through pale blue sky and black waves, streaky with spilled coffee.
I don't think they have repainted the yellow walls of my favorite coffee house since I was in high school. This was my home, my actual living room most nights, when I was 16, 17, 18 and couldn't work or be at real home. When I could study for hours on one cup of coffee, when my dad could still talk but didn't very often except when it was to yell at me for leaving dishes in the sink on busy school day mornings, when my hair was long and blonder, when I cared what the guy behind the counter thought about my smile and his co-worker came out to make sure I was 18 before slipping me his number.
I'm sipping a cafe americano now but my old favorite was a mocha with cinnamony chocolate and freshly whipped cream. On poor days, plain coffee or flowery fruity herbal tea that I would pluck the dried apples from, popping them into my mouth. Calculus, economics, english.
It is still a refuge these days when the house is full of blaring TVs that I cannot tune out because I do not usually have a TV. Vampire Diaries, 90210, Two and a half men, Fox news, etc etc stream before my eyes and I sit mesmerized, not because it is good programming, because it is there. And the remote is one of those big jobbies that I don't quite get. 800 channels? 50 buttons? DVR rewind? American culture?
So it is time to work and I know to come to the Living Room where it is quiet and soothing and people type away, read away, softly chat in the front of the converted house, wooden floors scratched with hastily pushed back chairs, the whirr of espresso, gentle sunlight streaming though windows until it becomes street lamp lit.
Home.
I don't think they have repainted the yellow walls of my favorite coffee house since I was in high school. This was my home, my actual living room most nights, when I was 16, 17, 18 and couldn't work or be at real home. When I could study for hours on one cup of coffee, when my dad could still talk but didn't very often except when it was to yell at me for leaving dishes in the sink on busy school day mornings, when my hair was long and blonder, when I cared what the guy behind the counter thought about my smile and his co-worker came out to make sure I was 18 before slipping me his number.
I'm sipping a cafe americano now but my old favorite was a mocha with cinnamony chocolate and freshly whipped cream. On poor days, plain coffee or flowery fruity herbal tea that I would pluck the dried apples from, popping them into my mouth. Calculus, economics, english.
It is still a refuge these days when the house is full of blaring TVs that I cannot tune out because I do not usually have a TV. Vampire Diaries, 90210, Two and a half men, Fox news, etc etc stream before my eyes and I sit mesmerized, not because it is good programming, because it is there. And the remote is one of those big jobbies that I don't quite get. 800 channels? 50 buttons? DVR rewind? American culture?
So it is time to work and I know to come to the Living Room where it is quiet and soothing and people type away, read away, softly chat in the front of the converted house, wooden floors scratched with hastily pushed back chairs, the whirr of espresso, gentle sunlight streaming though windows until it becomes street lamp lit.
Home.
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