Good Morning, Stranger

It’s funny how little things make a huge difference. One tiny circle can be the difference between one hundred and a thousand. One tiny straw broke the camel’s back. One wee little pea kept a princess awake all night.

And, in our house last night, one moment meant the difference between normal and totally bizarre.

Don’t worry, we’re all fine…it’s just that…my husband shaved off his beard.

At our wedding rehearsal…we got married at the camp where we met.

I’ve known my husband, The Sailboat King, for 18 years, almost exactly. We met at the end of summer, 1994, when he came up to a College and Career retreat at the Bible camp where I worked and where he spent parts of every summer as a kid. Lots of my friends were excited that he was coming – they’d grown up with him and they liked him. I remember one friend dragging me over to the dining hall because she wanted to say “hi” to him. I couldn’t care less, but I followed along. I can’t remember if she introduced us, but I do remember that he and his pals were being crazy and loud (an indicator of things to come) and I was eager to get out of there as quickly as I could.

Two days later, when packing up for the journey home, an hour away, the guy I was hitching a ride with told me, “I’m going to go with S, M, and C out on S’s parent’s pontoon boat, wanna come?” Well, as I had no other ride, the obvious answer was, “Yes,” despite the fact that my sister and her family had arrived that afternoon at my parent’s and I hadn’t seen them in like three years.

I had one distinct thought as I sat on the boat, watching three grown boys tubing in the water and having a fantastic time: “I can’t believe how obnoxious these people are.”

I’m pretty sure this is from that summer we met.

Six months later, I was sitting down with the camp director looking at applications for camp staff for the upcoming summer. He mentioned The Sailboat King’s name and I had to ask him who he was talking about. He told me, and images of an afternoon spent on S’s boat came to mind and I think I literally cringed. Ten minutes later I had to be reminded of his name yet again when we were discussing the available maintenance position. My one comment about him, “He’s kind of obnoxious, isn’t he?”

A few months later I shook his hand as I walked past him, on my way to ring the bell on our first day of staff training. “Glad to have you with us,” I said, weirdly and officiously.

He still teases me about that.

The two of us…somewhere around the time of this story!

So, the summer progressed. I remember wondering why he joined us for our Fourth of July party at someone’s house. Even though he’d been invited, it seemed funny because his best friend hadn’t been able to join us. Why would he bother to come? I mean, we’re his friends…but he doesn’t usually hang out with us! I enjoyed him, though. Discovered that there was more to him than most obnoxious twenty-one year-olds.

We started to talk more after that and I began to revise my opinions of him.

We went canoeing a couple times. Ate lunch at the same table. And then, after I’d been sick one week and feeling pretty awful, I stumbled out on the last day of camp, took down the flag from the flag pole, and brought it to the drawer where we kept it, folded nicely in its triangle of red, white and blue.

I opened the drawer. And found a bouquet of roses.

“Whose roses are these and why are they in my drawer?” I asked out loud, and, looking up, discovered that many of my friends were standing around – comrades in some secret scheme – watching me, even photographing this momentous occasion.

“They’re yours, dummy,” one supportive friend replied.

And, sure enough, The Sailboat King had gotten me roses.

I continued to revise my opinions of said King.

The actual, scanned photo from The Moment in Time when I knew…he likes me!

A few months later, engaged and madly in love, I asked him to shave off his beard, just so I could see what he looked like without it.

He agreed.

The first words out of my mouth when he emerged from the shaving?

“Okay. You can grow it back, now.”

The drastic event…one small moment in time.

Nearly 16 years of marriage later, he has once again shaved if off. But this time he did it for someone else. My dearest Sailboat King is playing Harold Hill in our local community theater production of The Music Man and our director – I say “our” because our entire family is in the musical – has asked him to shave so he can see which version of “Harold” he likes best.

I like the bearded version best.

The clean-shaven version stresses me out. It’s like waking up beside a stranger. Like kissing sandpaper…because, of course, his beard is already growing back.

Which means my stress is temporary.

Which is nice.

A facebook friend told me I should just enjoy it. Go with it. Have fun with this stranger.

The truth, of course, is that he’s still my Sailboat King, shave or no shave. He still makes me smile even when I’m cross and he still gets my heart beating faster with a single glance.

And that’s good.

So long as it doesn’t lead to a heart attack or something.

The truth is, after 15 years and 11 months of marriage, I love him so much more than I did that day I found my roses. And he, I am thrilled to say, loves me, too.

And puts up with my imperfections

Which are myriad.

Beard or no beard, there’s no one else I’d rather wake up with.

Before. He’d been working the beard down over the past few days…to make it less drastic. It still was.

A look that says it all.

Coffee. It’s What’s for Breakfast.

My functional work space at home. Luckily a cup of coffee tastes just as good here as in a lavish study.

I am sitting at my favorite coffee shop, at my favorite table, drinking my favorite beverage: Orange Juice. Ha ha! Just kidding. That struck me as funny. (Maybe if they added caffeine to orange juice…who knows? The direction of the entire world could turn on such a thing!) Coffee, actually, is what I’m drinking. With lots of cream. Even better if it’s in a cute mug.

I began to drink coffee in 8th grade at my neighbor Tish’s house. Tish is from Mississippi – which, on Orcas Island, WA, automatically makes a person unique. She is one of those people who loves everybody as if they deserved it, and makes you feel special simply for being you. She drank her coffee with brown sugar and served it in heavy pottery mugs. Whenever I see mugs like that I immediately “see” her tall kitchen stools at her heavy butcher-block table and smell sea-scented air, log cabin and lolloping Black Lab. I felt infinitely grown-up sitting there, chatting away with Tish, holding that huge mug of cozy goodness – which, inexplicably, I drank black.

When I left the island I left coffee behind for a few years and when I picked the habit up again in college my tastes had changed. No longer could I take it straight and bitter, now I wanted it mixed with hot chocolate or cream. LOTS of cream. (But never hazelnut creamer anymore, thank you very much, because somewhere in there I OD’d on it and I haven’t touched the stuff since. I am a fan of Nutella, though – who isn’t?)

So many cute mugs! (These are all my favorites) How does a girl choose?! Each one has a story. The Peter Rabbit I bought for myself because I needed it. (Ha!) And the bird one I bought as a gift but couldn't bear to part with it. The handle-less one is from Berlin - The KaDeWe. The black polka-dot I got at a antique/junk store for one dollar. The Norse one Colin bought for me for Christmas a few months early, then forgot where he hid it for two years. The last bird one I bought on our honeymoon.

I actually did have one coffee moment in high school, from whence cometh my need for so much cream. I was with my mom in Paris, on a Spring Break trip from Berlin, and we ordered espresso and it came in those adorable little demitasse cups that no girl who ever played house as a child could resist. I took one sip from that tiny cup – feeling sophisticated in my pink Nikes and green Benetton sweatshirt – and I think I refrained from spitting it all over my mother, but I’m not entirely certain.

It was vile. I was scarred for life by that tiny cup of French coffee.

But my favorite coffee moment came after college. I met my husband at Covenant Park Bible Camp, in northern(ish) Minnesota. I was the Program Director and he was the Maintenance Director. (That pretty much sums up our marriage duties today as well.) One morning at breakfast in the Dining Hall, my mother (who was the speaker that week) saw Colin drinking coffee. Mom knew – though I think she was still in denial as to the real reason – that I talked about Colin inordinately more than the other staff members I worked with. She had never met this young man, however, so when we found ourselves right beside him (“How did that happen? Huh.”) I casually said, “Mom, this is Colin.” And my mother – bless her heart – said to Colin, “Oh, I see you drink coffee, too.” And she held up her mug, indicating that they were in the same coffee-drinking club together. “Joe-drinkers Anonymous” perhaps, as if this was an exclusive club, a rare and wonderful thing to find a fellow coffee drinker.

I don’t mean to poke fun. I’m sure she was feeling nervous about meeting this, her last daughter’s first real beau, but it just was so funny. So Mom.

My dear college roommate, Rose, gave me this mug when I complained once that I didn't have any cute mugs. Obviously, this need for cute drinking vessels has been an on-going concern of mine. Though the mug is 20ish years old, the chocolate-covered coffee beans are far less elderly. The spoon is from Berlin...and I could not resist it. The coaster is made by our daughter Katie.

“I see you drink coffee, too,” Colin and I will say to each other from time to time over our steaming mugs and we smile and I get goose bumps, because that memory is part of what makes us a family. Coffee – black, sweet, or cream-colored – is intricately connected with the things that bring me joy.

Including writing, here in this coffee shop.

What’s your favorite coffee memory?