A New Start

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. Well, from the outside anyway. Twenty-four years ago on a cold snowy night, Joanne walked briskly along the wet sidewalk, pausing for a moment in front of the frosty window. It was the last night of the university-sponsored overseas trip and Amber was bound and determined to find the handsome guy that smiled at her in the Irish pub the night before.

Peering through the window, Joanne had glimpsed groups of people huddled around small tables. Everyone was holding unique mugs of warm drinks close to their chins, both elbows on the table, leaning into the person talking. Gazing through the window Joanne was entranced with how everyone was fully engaged. All attention and warmth reflected back to one another, big smiles and head-thrown-back laughter. The warm glow of the inside and the fellowship captivated her and invited her in. She felt as if she had found something she didn’t even know she was looking for, only to be jolted back to reality by her friend Amber a half-block away reminding her it was almost last call. 

Twenty-four years passed in the blink of an eye. Joanne graduated from college with a major in business and a minor in doubt. Joanne doubted herself and the decisions she made to get to this point. Was this what she wanted? A boring job in the not too small not too big town she never left? She reluctantly accepted an administrative position at a doomed local manufacturing plant and traded her bucket list for a weekly grocery list. There were nerve-wracking layoffs, career changes that never resulted in change. Boyfriends and bad decisions that resulted in heartbreak and bouts of depression. Then came long lasting flings with wine and emotional wall building. Joanne always felt alone in the town she never left and knew everyone. She could never decide if the town didn’t fit her or if she didn’t fit the town. Deep down, she always knew she was supposed to be somewhere else, but leaving took courage and all she had was doubt.

All the while the café and its alien tractor beam kept pulling at Joanne’s coattails. No matter what she did or where she went she could never escape its gravitational field. Friends noticed an increasingly far off gaze on Joanne’s expressive face, but didn’t understand when she reminisced about some old, boring, far off café that sounded dreary and depressing. Attempts to fish Amber for a conversation about the café and that night were never bountiful. The café didn’t pull at Amber like it did Joanne. Amber rushed past it on a different kind of mission, not stopping to bathe in its warmth.

After turning forty, Joanne reflected on her life.  Again and again, she saw herself avoiding taking chance. Joanne realized that she had played her hand too conservatively, ignoring her heart. 

Then came a turning point. A push. The death of her beloved aunt Brenda and a sizable inheritance check. After months of tears, wine, sulking, and sweatpants Joanne felt the tractor beam of the café even stronger. 

A desperate internet search on a boozy night and suddenly Joanne was looking at THE café, and it was for sale! The glow through the monitor felt like the same tractor beam feeling Joanne had felt all those years ago. With a little savings and inheritance, Joanne bought the café.

Now she was on the last leg of her journey. On a train with a one-way ticket to her destination.

The long train ride had been pleasant and the cabin comfortable enough. As Joanne laid in her sleeping quarters, where once she stared at the familiar surroundings of her bedroom walls, a kaleidoscope of images flashed before her eyes. Emotions came and went in waves synchronized to the rhythmic click-clack of the train. Her head full of doubt; sleep only came in short bursts.

The train stopped and Joanne nervously gathered her coat, hat, luggage, and the magazines she bought but was never calm enough to read. Once outside the train, she breathed in the cool crisp air and rubbed the sleep out of her eyes. She now felt like she might have slept longer and harder than she realized.

When her feet touched the sidewalk, her heart raced. She was relieved to see the village had not been touched by the hands of time. No fast-food restaurants, no vape shops, no trendy health food grocery stores, no gentrification. No people raced each other from places they don’t want to leave to places they don’t want to go. It remained just like she had remembered.

Joanne walked through the village square with only the picture memory of the café as her guide. She walked past the hardware store, the savings and loan, the drug store, and the florist. Joanne finally found herself standing in front of the café. 

But now the café was hers. Just thinking those words made her palms sweat. As she produced the key from her pocket and caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window. The reflection looked back at her as if to say “thank you.”

Once inside Joanne loosened her wool scarf and waited for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Rickety chairs and tables strewn about haphazardly, leaving an indecipherable map of their travels on the wood floor.

She placed her backpack and suitcase near a table by the window. She walked quietly across the café floor as if not to disturb the spirit of the café, to light the wood-burning stove. She filled a kettle with water and placed it on the cast-iron stovetop to warm. She searched cautiously behind the cluttered counter for some tea, forgetting for a moment that everything now belonged to her. 

While the stove heated up, she returned to the table and searched her backpack for her journal. She placed it on the table, rubbed the back of her neck with both hands, and took a deep breath. Dust floated through the beam of sunlight that illuminated the table. The well worn leather-bound journal, with its soft, frayed edges looked at home in the café. She began to write:

Here I am. 

I’m now officially a café owner. Not only a café owner but THE café owner. The café that once beckoned me, offered its hand and warmth to me, but I turned it down. Too worried about disappointing Amber to investigate why it was calling my name the first time.

Looking around at the café, I see its charm, but I admit there is work to be done that I didn’t expect. A good cleaning and some fresh paint would really brighten it up. I can see the possibility of a stage for live music and poetry reading in the corner. The coffee machines look inadequate and the place smells of tobacco. 

As the tea kettle whistled, Joanne put her pen down and carefully walked across the café floor.  As she poured the boiling water in a small ceramic yellow mug she started to see the café for what it was, something that hadn’t given up on her. Sure it’s going to need some work she thought. It’s not going to be easy.  But like it never gave up on me, I’m not going to give up on it. And that was all that mattered