It’s comforting and strange feeling at home somewhere; knowing the floor plan of the house, what each cabinet holds in the kitchen before you open it, seeing mugs that held hot chocolate on the morning of your 8th birthday, to feel the heat wash the cold from you and smell the redolent bacon and eggs wafting through the house.
Familiar voices and periodic snores permeate the ticking of the grandfather clock periodically. Not that the clock is needed, you can measure the hours of the day by the calls to the kitchen table. You know when evening is finally here, not by the hour struck, or the failing light through the western windows, but by the piano and organ filling the home to suffusion, carrying the lilting voices of the ones you call kin.
I can circumnavigate the house in the dark. I can run the stairs with my eyes closed. I remember the spots where the ceiling makes you duck to walk through. I know the workbench that holds the tools that carved my beagle’s headstone and built derby cars and rubber band guns. My feet freezing on the cement in the storage rooms is so familiar to me as I fetch fruits and vegetables for the coming repast that it seems comforting rather than cold.
I take some time away from the familiar confines of the home, fabricating a need for an item already in my car. Driving through the valley I take the least direct route to a final destination I’ve already consigned myself to. Winding along roads I know, staring down the hollow empty faces and buildings that once grinned back with the trappings of friends and family i knew, now peering back through guarded windows and unfamiliar yards. Schoolyards i knew, businesses that don’t exist in my residual copy of this world all scroll past the open window filling my eyes as the sounds of I Caught Fire fill my ears.
Navigating the labyrinthine arrangement of one way streets, I pull into a 2 hour parking space across the street from the local coffee shop, Caffe Ibis. I come to this place out of habit, out of over a decade of White hot chocolate with friends and lovers at all hours call me back whenever I am within earshot of it’s bizarre siren song. Michelle has worked here on and off over my time here, and is probably the only face I could expect to see here. The exterior has changed minimally so I can almost pretend it’s the same place where I hid away from life so long ago. They have moved the entrance and it honestly looks better, more mercantile, but less familiar, less correct.
I don’t know any of the employees anymore, no familiar smiles as i pass through the vestibule after missing the door handle that has changed since last I visited. Peering around, I sit back and drink in the sensations; memories of a happenstance concert, old loves, should haves, and never dids.
The counter setup has changed drastically since the first time I came here, it’s set up now so that I never know where to order and pick up drinks at. People flow around me like I am some obstinate boulder in a busy tide. After about 15 minutes of too much resurrection and no service I am ready to leave without my intended beverage when Michelle walks in from the rear dining area. Shorter hair, no dye, and different clothes, but it’s her. She doesn’t recognize me at first. Not surprising since there is more than 2 years, 100,000 miles, and 6 inches of hair between the Dave that rolled her out for the first time and the stranger that now calls her by name in her place of work. Hugs and salutations are exchanged. She looks healthy, happier and less confused that I’ve ever seen her; even her eyes seem more focused that is normal. We swap stories, catch me up on what everyone is doing and order drinks. Her girlfriend, Lindsay, calls and is on her way over so they can get drinks before going house hunting. After they arrive we go join them, sitting and talking for a while in the way that i guess reunited companions are supposed to do, but Lindsay’s presence has shifted the gears of the experience into something more formulaic than extemporaneous. We swap numbers, trade hugs and I’m into the car and bee-lining for my hostel. This has been enough history for one day.
