At the start, Friday mornings look suspiciously similar to all the rest. I grab a hat, click on Joey’s leash and take a left where our driveway meets the sidewalk. First, we pass the house with the mysterious giant dog. On one single occasion, this dog barked big and loud at Joey and now she forever hurries by in terror—she knows how to hold a grudge. After sporadic sniffing and spotty peeing, (all Joey), we hit a walking rhythm. We cross the five way intersection, heading west towards the corner with all the wild flowers. This is when Friday starts to veer from its siblings: we take the curvy street, the one leading to the coffee shop. I guess it’s kind of a coffee window—Cafecito in Atwater— we join a loose line of people gathered on the sidewalk, waiting to talk to the barista while he makes the drinks. If I were writing a google review I’d say, no frills, great coffee, good vibes.
Going to a coffee shop is indulgent. At home, there is a machine specifically designed to make drip coffee. There is another machine where I can draw out an espresso or steam matcha into milk. Boyfriend loves a user-friendly coffee related instrument, I benefit from his hobby. Still, the novelty of an external cafe whispers to me with siren songs. On Fridays, I heed the call.
There are other coffee shops in the neighborhood, but I always go to Cafecito. I love their lattes (hot and iced alike), but it’s more about their bare-bones set up. Something about the basic window makes me feel like an avatar in a video game. You appear in front of a two-dimensional wall and suddenly a collection of pixels pops into your hand. The experience is at once old-timey and futuristic. We began with open air marketplaces filled with stalls piled high with foods and goods, slowly the concept of retail ballooned into giant malls and elaborate window displays. Now of course, the landscape is once again shifting, favoring direct-to-consumer online shopping. Chain stores are shuttering, but the marketplace is alive, just on the web. We are barreling toward our old ways, only different. Cafecito pushes back against all of it. A physical space, without any overwrought design elements intruding on an otherwise simple experience.
One could feel guilty about the unnecessary expense of buying something I could make at home. But there is an undeniable—however unquantifiable—value in a communal watering hole. I get so much from observing people in line, the backs of their knees, the tilt of their heads. Watching couples interact, or not interact depending on how their day is going. If I’m lucky, the customer in front of me is a loud talker, and I catch their words, bottling them like a social elixir to ponder on the walk home.
Most conversations in the line are brief; rarely do I overhear something that sticks in my memory. It’s the general air of casual communing that pulls me towards Cafecito. Of course, there’s the personal dopamine hit when it’s my turn to chat with the barista. If Max is working, he gives Joey a little round biscuit. Much like me, she’s come to associate the window with a treat. When we reach the front of the line, she sits and tilts her gaze up, poised with anticipation.
I’ve gotten into a habit of speaking out loud on my morning walks. This is not just a Friday thing. I always aspired to have a daily gratitude journal, but I could never stick to it. Speaking my points of gratitude to the open air is just as potent. The ritual adjusts my frame of reference for the day and sets my thoughts on a path of enjoying what I have. When I practice gratitude with an iced coffee clutched in my hands—one that is far better than what I make at home—the everyday ritual borders on euphoric.
I decided to commit to the Friday Cafecito Celebration as an intentional culmination of the simple tasks, hard earned lessons, waves of pleasure and work done well. It’s a complete flip of my internal script, as I am quick to find the faults in my personal performance. I’ll fixate on things that I need to improve but that only generates a cycle of disappointment, which, shockingly, never lifts me into a new set of actions.
After mentally decreeing Fridays as the Official Cafecito Celebration, I marched up to the magical window. There was Max, Cafecito’s friendliest barista with his classic expression: round grey blue eyes, half smile, alert in the moment but a third of his mind wandering in the worlds of past and possible futures. Joey took her treat, opening her mouth to crunch the hard biscuit with her back molars. I ordered my iced latte, and when Max asked what I was up to, I told him what I was doing right then. Well it’s Friday and I come here every Friday to get a coffee. I’m celebrating the week.
He nodded, offering a supportive response as he clanked the espresso machine into itself to make my latte. His mop of curls reminds me of pictures from the 70s, my uncles leaning against a wall, grinning towards the unknown. I sometimes look at Max and think of my mother, wondering if we could be related in a distant way. If I had a brother, would we be confidants for life? I know sometimes it doesn’t work out like that.
Max handed me the latte, snapping me out of my drifting thoughts.
Anyway, I said I’ll be here next Friday. To celebrate the week.
We said our goodbyes and I walked back along the curvy road, following the shadiest path. I took little sips of my iced latte and told the air all the things I’m thankful for. Unbeknownst to him, Max was my new accountability partner. Celebration accountability, I told the air, that’s what I need.
In a way, carving out personalized time for regular revelry is subversive.
A long time ago, I liked to argue that we should abolish all holidays. It was a fun topic to bring up at parties, because it was 2019 and we were all so young.
Get rid of them! They’re all just economic tools that cause more stress than they’re worth!
I wasn’t sure if I believed that statement with all my heart, but it was fun to toss out and get a reaction. One response stuck with me, as it came from someone I thought would be anti-holiday. His pro-holiday reasoning was simple, it’s a nice way to mark the passage of time. How honest.
Sometimes we don’t get a huge sense of goodwill from the holidays, especially the federal holidays and the frenzied year-end bonanza that encompasses Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Years. But maybe we’d all be better off if we approached those days without so much expectation. If we saw them as shared etchings on the otherwise smooth face of time.
Instead of only worshipping life in pre-approved intervals, I want to cradle each week with a sacredness. To do that, I need Celebration Accountability. It’s a little seedling of a concept, but many of us suffer from chronic self-critique. It’s everywhere. The world capitalizes on it all the time. In fact, I’m surprised that Celebration Accountability isn’t already a huge industry. Think of the retreats! The apps! The millions of dollars that can be made from people who don’t know how to look in the mirror and say Good Job!
Celebration Accountability can manifest in so many ways. It’s unlikely the barista at Cafecito will remember me—unless I am very intense and try to make an impression in the 90 seconds I see him every 7 days.
But still, I can weave the ritual. I can deem the coffee shop a landmark, I can hold the iced latte in my hands and feel a thrill—not for anything in particular, just a blanket sensation encapsulating the many dimensions of one week in the long haul of life.
xx
James
Absolutely love this. Every word.