Life at the Coffee House

La Spiaza Observations:

“Have you eaten your turkey yet?” asked the lady with cane.
The old woman in the brown hat and blue sweater with colored spots in it (both items crocheted) replied, “yes it was delicious. Did you eat yours? I found shrimp in my freezer the other day and i couldn’t remember where i got it from. I asked my nephew to take some to his mother for me.”


I’m sitting at the round table by the bookshelf, drinking my cafe au lait and reading Wesley’s letters to John Newton, but I can’t stop from overhearing the two old women sitting by the window. The one with the cane has a slightly higher voice and is wearing typical grandmother clothes- a grey jacket, those flat soled tan velcro tennis shoes, and big glasses that magnify her laugh wrinkles. Glancing over there her eyes momentarily meet mine and she gives me a big hearty smile.

The other woman wearing the hat comes back with her sugar, sits down and leans toward her friend. “I keep telling him, ‘Kill em with kindness, but always beware, beware of your cousin, they’ll take your right teeth! Don’t tell em, don’t trust any of them!’ ”
Cane woman interjects, ‘Oh yes, I tell lots of things to my nephew that aren’t true”

The door swings open and two fashionable women in their thirty somethings clack by me and order- one asks for a chocolate mint latte, the other for a strawberry banana smoothie. The noise dies away and I can hear my two window friends again.

Cane woman: “You know, a merry heart makes glad. If I didn’t laugh so much im sure I wouldn’t be so healthy.”
Hat woman, “oh yes yes.”
Cane woman: “Oh look its snowing again! look at those little white flakes comin’ right down. We better get going soon.”
More customers stomp in and the ladies voices get lost again in the commotion.

Cane Woman: “Ohh its getting close, its getting real bad says the economist. Its coming real close I think.”
Hat Woman: “yep yep, real close, it gives me the shivers!”
Cane Woman: “well and you know they are building a mosque place down in glen ellyn. The economist said...(noisy) ... Obama..(cant hear them).. we’ve got to get going.”

The woman in the hat stands up and puts on her hand-sewn leopard print purse and her big fur coat. Her skinny legs clad in spandex stick out from under her puffy fur and make her look like a black dandelion.
They leave, the two fashionable ladies take their place. Soon they will leave, and someone else will come. I wish I could sit here all day and hear about people’s thoughts. All of these people in this little shop are brought here by their appetites for food, drink, comfort in a warm room. Each one brings with them history, memories, dead relatives, new babies, passions, hobbies, dusty collectibles. People are beautiful.
More Chai please!