It is important to know that my cousin’s housekeeper makes mysteriously the best cup of regular coffee I’ve ever had. It deserves it’s own blog. Because Nespresso thanked me with a machine or two (also blog-worthy on its own), I am sorted in NY. But Inez gives them a run for their money.
Anyway, she is off on Saturdays and I neglect to make myself a cup before going to pick up Mia.
I am parked in front of her friend’s house at 10:30. Uncharacteristically, MIA conforms to her acronym. She answers none of my phone calls, texts, nothing. Around then, a man pulls up in the driveway making me glad I didn’t presume to park in it. He notices my (cousin’s) car and does not see me in it waving through the tinted windows. He cannot feel my longing for the coffee he has in that to-go cup. I feel better about all my irrational concerns – terrorists had not taken over the house, she was not somewhere else stranded, there was no earthquake oddly affecting only this zip code.
Still by 10:45 I am anxious.
The man I waved to opens the door and smiled with whom I assume is his wife. Warm greetings all around.
“Hi, I’m here to get Mia,” I say.
Me with Mia last summer, just before she shed the "baby off her face. Note the coffee.
A fat mercurial dog interrupts the conversation, making himself known. Before I get too smitten the man snatches the mic back.
“Hi! Let me take you around and show you,” he says.
If he is Armenian (I wasn’t far off by the way), this kind of moment makes sense. Perhaps he and his wife had been mid conversation about something, and he caught my vibe quickly enough to deem me outside perspective. The hospitality of people from this part of the world is consistently the bulk of my experience with them. I follow without hesitation.
“Where you are parked is a bottleneck,” he says, indicating the small island between the single land and the side of the car. “You want to move up a bit more in the future.”
Now here is why coffee is critical: had I finished a cup, I might have processed that he did not know I’d picked Mia up here before and might have to do it again.
We wade between two large protective palm plants to get to his side gate. With the intimacy of an indigenous storyteller, he begins.
“There was a break-in at the house next to me. They used this pathway and my backyard.”
My channel surf is over.
He shows the cameras that caught the violation. He wants to heighten the existing gate, plate it with alternating wood slats that obscure view and an inlayed section atop what exists already. Basking in this kind of random fold-in that is refreshingly un-American (and exemplary of what should be standard humanity), I provide my amens of support.
“I’m thinking it should be stained instead of painted.”
“Well yes, that works well with the existing façade.”
His invitation for me to verify that 72-inches made sense based on the math makes clear what coffee might have hours ago had I made a cup, however inferior. Now it is time to point it out.
“So I’m not that kind of contractor,” I say.
“You’ll be doing the work yourself?”
“You don’t want that. I’m just here to pick up Mia.”
He turns away and looks down to give up.
“Why did you let me go on so long?” he implores.
“Because I was thoroughly intrigued and didn’t know you didn’t hear me earlier when I mentioned it. Wait, did I mention it at the door? Oh no, now I’m not sure.”
We bend over laughing. His wife sees the whole thing and stares at us when we cackle back into the house. Unsure which of us is most ridiculous, we apologize buckets and introduce ourselves to each other. (To be fair, he has not yet finished his Starbucks beverage.)
His wife promises that the girls are still asleep.
“Would you like a cup of coffee in the meantime?” she says.
“Please. God!”
It takes Mia long enough that I get to tour the beautiful home and better experience the realization of all that aspiration in his and his wife’s soul. There is art everywhere. Yes, stained black on the gate indeed because it makes better sense with the Rothensteins and Warhols in the monochromatic sitting room in the back. Yes, alternating panels because they are warm like the stunning hard clay sculpture (probably a game) surely dug up from an ancient Middle Eastern site. Of course, a specific inset to complete the additional foot of height to reflect the Asgardian vertical space inside the house.
I can only articulate all of this in retrospect because by now, an hour later, I have had a cup of coffee (Mia came down before the one offered there could be made).
I’m now invested. I will follow his parking advice and be back with or without Mia. To see how far my accidentally solicited help went.
And to get that cup of coffee. Because they understand.
They believe in it too.