Mug of Hot Steaming Coffee and Belonging

After almost twenty-five years of marriage, one December day I packed my things and moved to a Victorian bed and breakfast in downtown Indianapolis.

The reasons for this move are not important and, anyway, I wouldn't put them up on a public blog. What is important is that after so many years of family life, I suddenly found myself by myself. There was no noise in my apartment unless I made it. And it was always dark inside when I came home at night.

No doubt about it, I was glad to have broken loose. But, I did not have any close friends. Sure, there were work colleagues but they seemed embarrassed when I wanted to talk about what had happened. So, the phone rarely rang. I felt very much alone.

I missed being around people. I also missed the house I had lived in and the things that were in that house. None of them were fancy or valuable. But, all the same, I missed being around my things. All of those things told stories and through them I could construct my own narrative.

This sense of solitude was compounded by the terrible winter weather that year. It was bitter cold. There were heavy snows and I was trying, for the first time in my adult life, to do shopping, get to work, go to church and all of the other things I needed to do, without a car.

I remember the first Sunday after I left. I had gotten up very early to get ready to attend mass at Christ Church. Next to the bed and breakfast were some townhouses. My third floor bedroom looked down on these townhouses and on their windows.

Just below my bedroom I could see the open curtains of a townhouse bedroom. There was a lamp that exuded a warm glow by the window. And on a little round table with a kind of Laura Ashley cloth, there was a ceramic mug of hot steaming coffee. I gazed at it for a long time--imagine, me a coffee voyeur!

Somehow the combination of the mug of steaming coffee, the Laura Ashley textile, and the golden light spoke to me. It all seemed to underline that, hey, Daniel is very much alone and not in a real house, just a bed and breakfast. And only yards away, there are people who live in real homes, with their own things, and they wake up on Sunday morning to steamy coffee mugs and long sessions of New York Times and maybe soft classical music or Miles Davis Kind of Blue.

Gazing on that mug of hot steaming coffee I realized that I was at an "in between" place. I had left where I was and did not yet have my own place, my own routine . . . . . . not even my own coffee mug or coffee maker! I ached with loneliness. And I wanted to belong again to people and to a place.

Being at an "in between" place was like living in an existential parenthesis. The old had been left behind but what was to be, to become had not yet happened. How could I know that it would take almost a decade to accumulate my own things, establish another routine, build up an extended family and live in a place long enough to love it?

Today was a beautiful November day in central Indiana. I woke up at 6 am when it was still dark outside. The amber glow of the victorian era streetlights gave a beautiful patina to the sidewalk, the street and the trees. Inside this century old apartment, I had my books, art, music, some antiques, furniture and heirlooms. There are pictures of my partner, my kids, my mom and sister. In one corner of the living room are the holy icons.

On this early morning I smelled the coffee brewed by my timed Coffee Maker. I turned on one living room lamp and sat in an easy chair slowly sipping coffee, thinking about the day ahead. The coffee was in a sturdy hand-made mug that I bought on the Navajo reservation near Farmington, New Mexico several years ago.

When I went to shave, I left the mug, steaming, on the windowsill. When I placed it there, I thought: "Now I too belong."