I’ve been reading Joe Jones, a novel by Anne Lamott (my all-time favorite author- ever). I read this today:

“She said this beautiful thing one time,” says Sam. “She said that when the cafe was full, it was just like a tidepool village. Hermit crabs and seaweed, barnacles and teeny tiny fish.”

Sometimes Annie just gives me the shivers with the way she writes. I swear it’s like reading a page out of my own soul. As I read, I mark the pages where something particularly beautiful or profound jumps out at me so I can go back to it again later. The cover won’t lay flat anymore because of the dozens of pages I’ve dog-eared. This quote really jumped out at me today, because it reminded me of my favorite coffee shop.

I started going there a little over a year ago, because it was close to the place I went to beauty school. The baristas that work there are always cheerful and friendly, and right away I felt at home. I thought the place beautiful, with its high yellow walls covered with local art, and the giant roaster hunkering in a corner like a patient, waiting animal. There are only a few square tables, thick wooden things with heavily waxed tops, pastry crumbs always gathering in the cracks. In the back of the shop is a set of antique Victorian furniture, a stately red velvet couch flanked by two cracked and creaking armchairs that have swans carved into the wooden armrests. I curl up in these chairs and read until my eyes feel strained and bleary, and then I’ll just sit. I’ll listen to the conversations of the people around me and gaze out of the windows at the passing traffic while I sip my coffee. It has been months since I’ve had to specify my drink there; everyone now knows I have a deep and loyal passion for an iced grande caramel sauce americano with no room. I’ve become friends with the baristas, several of them even come to me for haircuts now. I know about their lives, they know about mine.

There’s another regular who comes in all the time, a wonderful older woman with silver hair who the baristas call “Mama Ruth.” There’s a sweet-looking young girl with flushed cheeks and mousy brown hair who comes in when one of the handsome male baristas is working, sits down at one of the tables, and watches him out of the corner of her eye. There’s an artist, a gallery owner and the man in charge of rotating the art that is displayed on the walls of the cafe, who always says hello to me. There’s a man who works for the company delivering food and supplies in a huge white van. Once, someone scribbled “free candy and puppies inside” into the filth covering the back door.

Coming to this place day after day has given me, for the first time in my life, a sense of community. I feel connected there, one of the teeny, tiny fish who flit back and forth in the tidepool. It’s so good to be part of this teeming little village, to be one of the creatures who belongs and adds life and color to the cool, salty water. It helps to know that I have a place to go when I need to be part of, when I’m having one of those days when all you can do, as Annie says, is just patch, patch, patch. Nothing can be all that bad when you know that all the other fish really like having you there to swim with.