Coffee Shops, Pastis and Hookahs

I sit in my favorite coffee shop this morning, ready to start my week. My laptop is whirring happy sounds, my dog is laying at my feet (I told you this was an awesome place), her body content from the long walk we just shared and Johnny just brought me a luscious piece of “quintuple chocolate cake” that Trish has created and which he wants me to try. It is not yet 8:30 and the world is good.

As the minutes pass, I am juggling a few quiet phone calls with the school district, tying loose ends in the name of “three kids going back to school - two of them to new schools”, I am responding to emails from clients, arranging for our bathtub to get repaired, making sure my best friend receives some information she needs, and scheduling a week’s worth of coaching calls.

In the background, I hear a very distinctive sound.

It feeds me in a way I do not yet fully understand.

It is the sound of “men in coffee shop, in the morning.”

To my left is a group of men, in their 50s I would guess, sitting around and ... being.

The same scene is taking place on the other side of town, in another very lovely coffee shop.

The same scene will take place today, around the town square in many villages in the south of France. There, they will probably drink Pastis.

In the high mountains of Pakistan, too. Possibly around a hookah.

All over the world, men gather.

And basically, shoot the s**t.

And this morning - with the help of Trish’s chocolate cake - I am understanding it better. I am connecting with its timelessness, with its rightness.

Men gather and shoot the s**t in a way that we don’t.

We don’t because, well, we are too busy making the world go round.

And I don’t mean this is a feminist, angry, “poor us” sort of way.

I mean this is a privileged, honored and very aware sort of way.

We get up in the morning and before our teeth are brushed, we have a list of things that need to take place just so things may function. Just so the machine may run.

And while we go through our day, we keep track of many different pieces of the puzzle. We juggle.

Kids, parents, pets, homes, work ... all the colorful threads of the tapestries we weave.

The tapestries we are lucky to weave.

And yes, it is a lot. But we can do it and we do do it. And the beautiful thing is that, if we let ourselves learn some skills and use some tools, we can do it (mostly) away from stress.

Which allows me to sit on a coffee shop on a Monday morning, doing my sweet juggling and feeling at peace with hearing four men talk about their tools.

Men who most likely have jobs. Jobs which bring in money. Money which often allows us to collect the beautiful colorful threads we need to do our weaving - and our juggling.