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.
