A Coffee Shop Friday Morning

I've always loved getting to experience life from another's point of view and coming to understand them more fully in doing so. When it comes to strangers, visiting local grocery stores is one of my favorite touristy adventures. When it comes to friends and family, I treasure the chance to be a fly on the wall and watch them in their zone. In the last year and a half, I've eaten in the Senate cafeteria with a brilliant college friend who worked there, managed to pose as neither-a-student-nor-a-guest-lecturer in a middle school music class session taught by my best friend from college, ventured through the disco-ball and country music-filled upstairs bedrooms of my brother's fraternity house and now, I've witnessed my mom as a coffee shop lead barista.

While home visiting for Thanksgiving, I jumped at the chance to join Mom for an unusually short shift on Black Friday morning at Land of A Thousand Hills Coffee in Bradenton, Florida. We left the house earlier than usual (when in vacation mode) with her in a red t-shirt emblazoned with a beautifully bold and simple "DRINK COFFEE. DO GOOD." As we drove down the Palma Sola Causeway towards town at 7:13 am, we watched the sun rising higher in the sky. As both my mother and I are prone to do—for better or for worse—she shared her thoughts on the situation unsolicited: "It's not a consuming thing, I just love it when I'm there." I was excited to fully experience the place that had reenergized her over the last year.

Mom unlocked the doors, tied a funky wrap around her waist, turned on the designated Pandora station and got to work bustling around checking on and prepping things while I settled down at a wooden table and sat on chairs covered in wonderfully mismatched leftover Nigerian fabric donated from my grandmother's collection. I worked on analyzing the options for replacing my beloved digital camera and buying some gifts from Noonday, happy to enjoy Black Friday discounts from the pleasant, line-and-traffic-free coffee shop. When the neighbor with the day's opening shift at Wells Fargo entered as the first customer, Mom introduced herself and kindly walked out and said, "Let me give you a hug." Wary of his broken arm in a cast and fully aware of my mother's tendencies, I jokingly mentioned, "Watch out, she's an aggressive hugger." There were quite a few more welcome distractions throughout the day: I met the twenty-somethings that she worked with, the caterer who supplies all of the food, a guy who used to coach at my South Carolina university and one of my grandmother's AAUW friends out for breakfast with her granddaughter. I happily noticed the cute couple on a chatty coffee date, the mother and four-year-old who worked on the communal puzzle while waiting for their breakfast, the people stopping by on their way to their offices and the families and twosomes communally enjoying some post-Thanksgiving deliciousness. I chatted with my brother, Chris, and his friend Aaron as they ate turkey bacon sandwiches. I stole a taste of a mocha chill that Chris had gotten after Mom had unsuccessfully tried to sell both boys on Samoan chills, claiming that they were “just like the Girl Scout cookies” and making sure that they knew that whatever they got was her treat. I discussed Nashville tourist spots with Mom's coworker.

 

In between meeting people and making my ecommerce decisions, I admired the retail options (t-shirts, mugs, and coffee with extras) and made the not-so-difficult decisions to enjoy a rare green tea latte with a morning glory muffin, some pleasantly orange-infused water and later, a surprise curried-egg wrap with star fruit on the side and a round two of the hearty vegetable soup that I had both discovered and fallen in love with on Wednesday. As an avid listener of coffee-shop-approved music, there were only four songs that I didn't already know and love on the playlist in the four hours I stuck around. Colbie Caillat, Sarah Bareilles, John Mayer, Norah Jones, an acoustic duet cover of Cher Lloyd's "Want You Back", the Fray, Phillip Phillips, some of the calmer Bruno Mars and Jack Johnson were great company. I was very much unsurprised when it took an hour and 18 minutes after Mom's shift had ended to actually get her out of the coffee shop—she kept running into people that she loved or helping with just one more task. It was my favorite kind of morning: relatively productive, fun, and filled with opportunities for people-watching, chatting, and most importantly, tasting.

Workin' Hard, Hardly Workin': An Exercise Class with My Mother

Exercise: it's an amusing endeavor. Like a lot of things, it only works if you do it regularly, and yet, there are so many different forms and methods of exercise that every now and then, something can surprise us. Last week, I joined my mom’s exercise class at the tiny but nonetheless well-patronized local gym. Somehow I willingly woke up at 7:45 am (easy compared to the 3:55 am alarm for the flight to Hawaii, but still semi-painful), grabbed a couple of honey-wheat pretzels and a juice box, and made it to class. Hey, with our brilliant track record of being late for oh, everything except business meetings, we were only the second-to-last there. I grabbed an available spot that wasn’t next to mom, but wasn’t front and center either—success.

I was most definitely the only person under 40 years of age in the room of about 15 people. The instructor, Karen, seemed as energetic as any twenty-something, and very much ready to teach “Power Sculpting." My favorite people instantly became the two old men behind me who assisted me to set everything up (weights? Step and risers? Rubber band AND medicine ball? What is this?!) Now, my mom is certainly the slowest runner and hiker in our family (of semi-overachieving varsity high school/college athletes), but she is tough. I winced more than a few times and intentionally hid the fact that I was a division 1 athlete. Somehow, the hour was eventually over. 

I learned a few things as I regained a healthy sense of humility. Older people call it a “seat”; not a butt, not an ass, nor a bottom. I have to say, I normally like seats a lot more than I did during that class. Also, I think I now understand why people of older generations hate "obnoxious" (yes, some of it certainly is--Exhibit A: "it's Britney, bitch") top 40 music; that’s what they have to listen to while they do unenjoyable exercises over and over, about seven repetitions and one set past what anyone would “enjoy”. Anyways, I promise I didn’t hate it as much as this rant might suggest. It was nice to complete a decent core and weights workout by 9:30 am. I even decided to do 90 minutes on the elliptical afterwards in place of  my “long run;”so what if its Thursday and long runs are supposed to be on Sundays? This rule-follower would allow a lot of rationalization to avoid that famous Florida sunshine for more than an hour. Bonus: I was able to indulge my deep love magazines. You can’t take those on long runs because you’d look really weird if you did and you might even incur something worse than the scars I have from that lovely running-and-texting incident (yes, it happened).

I also found out the other day that my dad recently cracked several ribs waterskiing: another acknowledgment that hey, nobody wants to grow up. I currently embrace this mentality--silly as it may be--by listening to Taylor Swift's “Never Grow Up”, Kenny Chesney's “Young,” and most recently by loudly singing along to the chorus of “Barefoot Blue Jean Night” by Jake Owen (“Never wanna grow up, never wanna slow down”). On the cusp of my 20th birthday, I have definitely put up more than my fair share of whining about “getting old.” I’m kind of worried that my knees are going to be very pissed at me in the next five years or so...just like my boyfriend Jay, I guess. Poor guy: he only has four total knee ligaments although I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to have three in each. I do have to yell at him because he typically doesn't consider this. At least he can keep up with my brisk-to-others-but-normal-to-me walking pace as we pursue as many adventures as possible.

One last musing: it really is great to do ab workouts while watching a movie. Also, I hope the rest of humanity didn’t judge me too much for my yoga and calisthenics stint in the airport yesterday at 8 am. Well anyways, off to run…I’ll shut up now.