To my dearest Puritan Coffee & Beer,
I know it's been awhile since my last visit. As I'm sure you heard, the world essentially stopped turning and people had to bunker up so to speak. I should have been more upfront with you regarding my absence, but you shut your doors before I could.
I resorted to tulip-filled walks with your curbside cold brew in hand, but it wasn't the same as setting up camp in the loft for an entire three receipts so I could stay on the WiFi. A pandemic hit hard, taking away life as we knew it, and my chance to say goodbye with it.
And so Puritan, this is an ode to you. A recollection of the life lived inside your doors, after I finally found a parking spot.
You began as a stop on the way to thrift stores, another unfamiliar place older girls would take me on a September day to ice the hit of going straight from recruitment into classes. I wasn't yet sure of who I was or the person I wanted to be. But you always stuck out in my periphery on a Dickson drive, filled with people I thought worth emulating.
Mentors and friends would lend an ear from across the table- oh if your walls could talk! They would tell stories of almost failing Economics or old (and new) love. But if they could read, they would flip through smudged moleskin pages and learn the depths of my heart.
Thank you for increasing my coffee standard to an unachievable level. I frequent historic coffee establishments in New York City, my new home, but no roast will ever warm me the Onyx way.
Thank you for being the front row seat to a change of season. Warm summer breezes on your porch paired best with a beer on tap, and I was sure Fayetteville winter had returned as I investigated the commotion as someone slipped on the ice walking through your foggy glass doors.
Thank you for being a place we could gather, whether for morning coffee or Harry Potter trivia and margaritas. Your tables were the shelves holding my heart as I set it down to rest processing with a friend, or my foundation as I contemplated my world crumbling. I'm sure more people know about my prayer requests than I would like because (we all know) it echoed more than we realized, or maybe everyone was just listening.
Thank you for being where we could celebrate too. Your Moscow mule was the first sip of 21 to run through my veins, and you were the last place being with people didn't feel strange before things got...strange.
I'm not sure if I will ever feel as comfortable or local as I did when I would walk into you, Puritan. I now sit in big-city restaurants, after proving I've been stuck with a remedy to save the world and removing my mask, only to look around and be surrounded by people I will never see again. I miss walking in and knowing someone at every table, pulling up a seat and exercising a muscle I haven't used in a long time- connecting. I miss feeling like I belong somewhere, like I am right where I'm supposed to be.
New York isn't so bad, I spent hours dreaming of where I am now in your very presence. This city is magic, and makes everything in life seem small. But that's my point- isn't life about something completely different than we make it? I always thought coming here would solve my problems, but most days I wish I was in that little coffee shop in Fayetteville, Arkansas, waiting to see who would walk in next.
I know you've changed, you have a whole other side to you now- sleek and screen free. I wish you'd told me before moving forward. I feel like I deserve to know after all I gave you. But I've changed too, maybe I feel entitled because of all you...gave me.
I'll see you soon.
Love,
EJ
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