day 15, to the one you miss most

Day 15. What you miss the most

to a small café in a small college town,

You are my first memory of college–a chai tea latte, before I was even sure I would attend the university. You were some of my last good memories from college–the semester I had to let go was the hardest.

When I was hired a few days before my first semester was to start–hired largely, it seemed, because the owner felt the need to protect me from something that would eat or destroy the tiny person I was–I felt like Jack. The other employees were giants–the college crowd I could never hope to be friends with, the ones that were painfully cool and perfectly casual about it. The ones that knew what they wanted, pushed hard toward their goals. The ones that actually became the coffee shop.

When I was hired, the owner told me I would grow into the place. I would fit right in. I would figure myself out. I couldn't imagine then how right he could be. At that time, he had collected a staff of people so diverse, each with their own passion and with an equal passion for serving customers the best coffee we could–knowing what each bean tasted like, how each regular liked their cappuccinos, how to get the espresso machine to hum instead of growl. I fell in love with everyone that came through the doors in the beginning, and I wanted to keep all of them. We would stay inside the doors, sipping from over-sized mugs, and we would be safe.

It is an understatement to say that my time behind that counter was my favorite job so far. The three and a half years gave me many of my best friends, many of my best memories, a reason to get up and enjoy the sunrise on Saturday and Sunday mornings–a place that felt more like home than I'd ever experienced outside of Wapakoneta, Ohio. But home isn't always happy, and family conflicts cut the deepest.

When things started to unravel–but if we're honest, the seams were stretching from the start–I wanted to run before things broke down. I didn't want to see the cancer in it's final stages, but I couldn't pull myself away. Each day was a new heartbreak, and the coffee was more bitter than sweet. The employees had the espresso machine screaming. The weekend crowds were thinning–moving on, finding Starbucks, seeing what was happening before most of us could accept it.

I became afraid of what I would find in the store before opening, before filling the bakery baskets with bagels and muffins, before the place woke up and smelled familiar–rising dough mixed with coffee and cucumber slices and the odd dog that would sit near its owner to snag bites of egg. I was afraid that one day, you wouldn't be there.

One of my pictures is still hanging in your dining room, folding at the edges and yellowing. I took the others with me when I left. I didn't want to be there when the doors closed. I cried that day, and I cried each time I walked back through those doors after.

Now, after a summer in the news with an uncertain future, you're still holding on. You're still bringing a crowd of vulnerable college students into some sense of a community. Somehow, this is almost more painful–to think that we can never get back to what we were, and that those there now can never know how golden it was for a time. I'm trying to let that go, realize that my time there is a memory and it is perfect for someone else–in the way that anything human can be perfect when we're a part of it.

So I suppose, in closing, all I can say is thank you. For my friends, for the tips that grew as I grew into my job, for the regulars, for my husband (who I met while standing behind the Plexiglass food prep counter), for the best times I've known and the best cappuccinos I've tasted.

Thanks to everyone that was there with me, at one point or another. Thanks for remembering it as much as I do.

Love and continued devotion,
Megan

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day 5, to my dreams

Day 5. Your dreams
(I am re-arranging. This is technically letter four. Letter five, to my sister, will be posted tomorrow. It's proving exceptionally difficult to write.)

Hello, beautiful.

I thought I'd buried you. There was a long week that summer–when I knew writing wasn't enough; when banks quit giving out loans; when I realized we wouldn't have health care; when I thought about how long it would take to find the right city–that I dedicated myself to pushing you away from me.

They make movies about this. The love we push away. The unexpected return–waking up in a cold sweat, or seeing your lover with his new wife walking along the sidewalk. Or standing in the shower, feeling like something is missing and counting your limbs, your fingers, your toes to see that you're all there. You remember. You re-member. You realize you hadn't forgotten. Like the tree roots trapped in the foundation of your garage. You cut it down. The sapling keeps coming back–each time with a thicker trunk.

I love sleeping with you. I love showering with you. It's where you're most vivid. They've done studies about this, you know. In my mind, in those moments, we're already together. I purchased the small warehouse in the French quarter of St. Louis, the one with the glass front near the farmer's market. That was two summers ago. By now, the plot of grass next to the warehouse would be a garden–big enough for all of our produce.

Word would have gotten around by now. Our house-made chai blends. Our vegan pastries. I'm still working on the recipes, you know. Still tweaking and increasing and kneading more. Needing more. I'm missing the mornings of 6 a.m. baking duty, that hour of sunrise when all I had to think about was you, me and not spilling the bucket of sesame seeds. I planned the furniture, the menu, the press releases and media buzz. I did mock interviews. I planned events with local artists. I saved the farmers of a community.

But that was when we were getting on well, and then I dropped you like the tray of bagels that burnt my arm–scattering them across the floor, under the grill and abandoning them for days because I was still angry about how something so familiar (so many dozens carried each day) could hurt so much. That was the moment I went back to, when I was trying hardest to let you go.

I don't know what brought you back. The nostalgia that's been eating me for days. The homesickness. The delayed sense of trauma at abandoning my family. So I cling to you, and I don't want you to get the wrong impression. This isn't a rebound. This isn't just a chance to feel you again. This is for keeps. This is for real dreaming, and for letting myself be okay with this.

This time, I'm accepting that you're a part of me–the café with a two-bedroom apartment above that I will never stop looking for, bracing myself for, dying for. Because we never know. You could be there at any moment, on any sidewalk. I don't want to put my head down and force myself to walk on by.

Yours, with deepest affection,
Megan

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the local & the locale

our bookshelves

or "The Things We Brought to Busy Ourselves"

or "The Things That Now Seem Unnecessary"

This is the last place I expected myself to be blogging from, but here we are. In a French McDonald's, the only place we could afford to steal WiFi from on a Saturday afternoon. My nerves are fried. I don't know if it's the stress of moving to a new culture, too much whipped cream on my coffee, too much caffeine or too much time in a McDonald's. It's odd. You wouldn't expect to come into a McD's and find yourself thinking, "That latte art is fabulous," or "I want the entire box of macarons!"

So while I'm preparing lesson plans for my first week of classes, Joe is studying French verbs. We're taking a break from our apartment, where it seems like everyday someone leaves a nice note about what we've been doing wrong. (Who knew you couldn't hang your laundry out to dry from the only window in your apartment? Why have an entire recycling bin dedicated entirely to junk mail?)

I've been complaining a lot lately, but there's also been a lot of good going on. We're getting in touch with Nancy culture, sorting through our magazines of community events and trying local food.

This week, we even discovered that the Ch'ti name so popular for pubs and brasseries (pubs with beers on taps, but literally translating to "brewery") in the area is tied to the Picard language. Picardy and Nord-Pas-de-Calais are regions near us, in Northern France near Belgium.

For centuries, France was a country of patois, or region languages. Few of the languages have held on, being transformed into more-or-less comprehensible dialects of modern French. Chti or chtimi of the North is one of the most prominent, even more so thanks to Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis, a film following a man as he travels the the region of the Picard language.

Intrigued? Who wouldn't be? Start studying your Ch'ti vocab on Chti.org before you pop across the pond for a visit. I've yet to start learning the language, but I've been reaping the benefits of the Ch'ti pubs. Last night was our first night at a bar in Nancy & our first time out with the girls I'm working with at l'université. It was nice to start feeling connected to people again, to have a few hours to forget about the bills we've as yet been unable to pay–and for once not for financial reasons, but for electronic banking issues!

Outside of linguistic changes (a subject Joe & I will both geek out on for post after post if we weren't afraid to see our readership plummet), we've been enjoying the local food. For once, this means more than our regular baguette and pastry line-up that we've settled into at Chez Régis, the boulanger (bread-maker) closest to us. Can't wait to post about mirabelles, a celebrated fruit of the Lorraine region, and more candies with bergamots. But for now, it's time to get back to vocabulary lessons.

We've found a new kindred spirit, a friend familiar with the troubles of French bureaucracy and blogging. Meet Lauren in Lorraine, a fellow lover of baking, & her husband over at Metzing Around. The new Expat generation has got this blogging thing down.