192/365 Coffee Friday

I go to coffee on Wednesdays with Astrid. We sit in the back of a little ice cream (gelato, actually) place and pontificate, knit, and solve the world's problems. This Wednesday I didn't, though, because of camp driving and busy summer for Astrid and our other friend, Louise. But Louise wanted to get together on Friday, which would be a new thing for me--I don't think the two of us ever have gone to coffee alone. Strange--it's been 4 years of going to coffee with her but never just us--Astrid is the connection between. But I think we both wanted to get out. So I got to the gelateria at 9:00--I'd told her 9:30 because I had no idea how long camp drop off would take--and there is Fr. Miguel on the opposite side of the street.

He's gotten his hair cut because it's every other Friday. So he was across the street and comes over to say hi.

Nothing much to say--it was nice to sit and chat: coffee, a muffin, kids, and then Louise showed and we talked about her vacation and other stuff. The stuff doesn't matter. What matters is harder to define than conversational topics on a hot July morning. Planting my feet in this parish, in this neighborhood--I know, I talk about that a lot--but the idea of living somewhere where I had a chance of running into my parish priest on the street and then have coffee with him? Instead of a tight lipped smile and the weird feeling of meeting someone out of context like when you see the checkout girl from the grocery store at the next table in a restaurant? And then he sends out a twitter message about running into me, and Sr. Hildegard responds that she's jealous, that she's been working hard while we were caffienating ourselves? The whole idea is like something out of a novel that I wouldn't want to finish if I were reading it.

But I'm not just reading it.