Uninterrupted Java

One of my favorite times of the week is Saturday morning. My wife and I have developed a routine of going to a local coffee shop, The Steaming Cup, for coffee. I don't know how it started, it just sort of happened one Saturday a couple of years ago and we thought it seemed like a good thing, so we just kept up with it. We are there with the rest of the regulars almost every week. It's like the TV show Cheers, but with coffee.

I think it started as a kind of "lets go for coffee and talk house projects," way back when and became a ritual. Now it has become a chance for us to catch up with what went on over the week as well as what is in front of us for the coming week. The best part of it is we have each other's undivided attention for an hour and a half. No distractions, no dog, no kids, just us.

The things we talk about cover the gamut. We talk about our kids; when they were little and the cool kids they've become. There are times when talking about them that Donna gets near tears, not out of sadness, but out of love. During our hectic weeks, we don't often get a chance to talk at such an intimate level and sometimes memories get triggered, and that's okay. Our kids have become great young human beings and that's all we can ask for.

And we laugh too. We laugh hard at the insanity that is our life from week to week. A couple of weekends ago we spent 10 minutes setting up a "Home Screen" for her phone, something I assured her would make her life easier. After some quick tips, she was off and running. We laughed that she's spent 2 years without this simple trick to make life a little easier. We also laughed because it's how we roll. We tend to put projects off for months or years and when it finally gets done, we're always hard pressed to figure out why we waited so long.
Running for a refill!

With both of our kids now away at college, this time every weekend has allowed (forced?) us to rediscover who the other person is and why we fell in love nearly 28 years ago. When we were first married, we used to go grocery shopping on Saturday afternoons. Afterwards we went out for pie and coffee at Baker's Square on the East Side of Milwaukee. I used to love those outings for all the same reason. And I realized that these new coffee dates every Saturday at The Steaming Cup stand as a sort of return to those days at Baker's Square.

The time gives us a chance to talk about our worries and concerns as well as our excitement and dreams. Donna is in a class right now about the book "It's Never Too Late to Begin Again" and it was fun talking to her about how it is stretching her as a person - in uncomfortable ways. We talked about her childhood and how it differed from my own, in part because of our parents, but in part because of our personalities.

I'm sure most people don't need this sort of one-on-one time every week. People might say that's what they do at home every night, and that's fine. I only know that it is something I've come to consider precious time. It's US time and it rounds out a crazy week and sets me right before the next one. In fact, if she has to work or something and we can't do coffee, I miss it.

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