For a wonder, for a mercy, my dear Swiss-German ex-Marine-Corps self-abnegating husband has agreed to have a weekly massage. Did you catch that weekly? It took my most persuasive argumenting to get Bill to agree that a regular and frequent hour with primo masseur Quan would help the painful arthritis in legs and back. It has indeed.
Alas because of macular degeneration, Bill can no longer drive…I am his wheels. So what do I do for his Hour with Quan?
I think the expression is Bliss Out.
It’s my Abbey Thursday! Favorite hour in the week. Sylvia’s Free-Play Day. Hour.
The Abbey is a coffee house in Santa Cruz–happily, it’s across the street from Quan. Actually it’s The Abbey Coffee, Art & Music Lounge.
The space was created in 2008 with “a vision to create a common space for people from the larger Santa Cruz community to connect, study, and hangout, all while enjoying fantastic coffee and a variety of musical and artistic expressions…”*
The space is enormous…and puts me in mind of a hotel ballroom I caught glimpses of as a girl—the one in San Diego’s Hotel Del Coronado**. But this room is for studying, quiet collaborating, schmoozing on comfortable sofas and comfortable chairs…working, reading, writing, figuring, drawing on a card-playing-size table—some round, some square–or at a banquet-size table. Or if you’re alone, you might get one of the single desks set side by side against the long interior wall.
Me, when I set my hand on The Abbey door to pull it open, my heart beats faster—“Will my chair be free?”
There is a pair of large tufted baby blue velvet-upholstered Wingback chairs near the serving counter and I hope for one of them. Except when it’s approaching Finals Week at the university, most often one of the chairs is free. I throw my tote bag with my hefty MacBook Pro onto the chair to reserve it, then take my place (usually there’s a line) to order my large white china cup of Cappuccino with almond milk and packet of two madeleines—or a fresh-baked raspberry or vanilla French custard pastry. In addition, I order a Cappuccino to bring to Bill.
Because I’m old and my big blue chair is close by, I take my seat and open my laptop—soon Kaden or Covita brings my Cappuccino and pastry over and sets them down on the little round table between the two chairs. The surface of my cup is a swirl of a heart shape, the way barristas do when they finish off the froth on the top of a Cappuccino, so pretty. How do they DO that?
To the left of my chair against the big tall East window is a long banquet table. Today there are five Thirty-Something women, softly chatting and each knitting or crocheting a project. Straight ahead on a rosy velvet sofa is a young Asian woman bent over her laptop open on her knees. To my right at a card-size table is a young pony-tailed man/woman with a bottle of beer at the ready, absorbed in a book. To my mid-right at a large square table are two blondes, heads bent, laptops open, pencils in hand, writing on something on the table. At another rose-colored sofa near the back of the room is a balding man in horn-rimmed glasses, hand to forehead, lost in thought.
It’s summer, so there are not many customers. Late spring when Bill’s appointment fell at lunchtime, I had to ask to join others at a table or on a sofa, the ballroom-size lounge all but full.
Still one of the great things about The Abbey is that somehow because of the immense space, the way furniture is placed, the very high ceiling, and of course the nature of the guests, it’s wonderfully quiet. I rarely hear a murmur.
Regarding “the nature of the guests,” about four visits ago I noticed a two-inch folded-newspaper sailing ship on the rim of the bookcase to the left of my chair. Just perched there. Had it fallen from the mobile overhead? Dangling through the air above me is a large intricate marvelous mobile somebody created then hung—little boats of folded newspaper floating/dangling among a couple of thick manuscripts. I centered the little paper ship on the bookcase shelf. Each Thursday when I’ve arrived, it has been my pleasure and relief to find it exactly there. A good feeling that I’m among others with my sensibilities about small random delicate works of art.
A slim twentyish girl in a to-the-floor awning-striped cotton beach dress just sashayed past on her way to the Women’s Restroom—her breasts barely tucked in. She looked ridiculous, out of her element, but why on earth am I suddenly so prudish? (Hey, Sylvia, it’s Santa Cruz!)
Behind me Covita and Kaden stand softly chatting at the counter, waiting to make coffee or tea, heat a croissant or melt cheese for a sandwich…cut a slice of freshly-baked chocolate cake…
I work so well here. Have written/edited pages of our novel…worked on this blog… written and sent off a letter I found difficult to write (internet is free)…
What is it about the room? Isn’t part of it that it’s freeing being out of context? That when I’m not surrounded by a hundred dozen bits and pieces of my life from the past and present to remind me of who I am…what else I should be doing…where I’m falling short…what I’ve neglected to do but mean to do…want to do but not really (clean up my study’s tangled mess)… when I’m in a neutral context with strangers with whom I have an immediate unspoken connection—we both chose The Abbey of all the places in Santa Cruz—I’m Loosey Goosey at her ease, with juices flowing.
I am not hiding. Not out of the reach of the world here, not at all. My cell phone is on, at the ready. Although I do have to diminish the rooster crow that announces the arrival of a text and the old-fashioned telephone ring that tells me someone wants to talk to me. I can never mute my phone when I’m apart from Bill…
But now that I think about it, isn’t it that I’m invisible in this big room?…don’t matter to anybody except Kaden when he’s ready with something I’ve ordered—he thoughtfully brings it over to me. I’m invisible because I’m not a member of the University community…not a functioning member of any community at this point, for that matter, except at grandson Cameron’s Santa Cruz High School LaCrosse Team.
The Abbey is principally a student hangout, and part of the luster that rubs off on me from that blue velvet chair is that I feel like a student again… As I said, bliss.
Well, it’s 12:22…time to fetch Bill’s Cappuccino, go pick him up and greet Quan.
Curious, fascinating, marvelous what a stolen hour can do.
*abbeycoffee.org
**The hotel in the classic movie Some Like It Hot.
