We create community where we need it, seeking connection over a cup of coffee or a sweet treat. Coronavirus puts that kinship in jeopardy so it's imperative that we hold on tight.
Remember that scene in “Little Women” when Beth is gravely ill with scarlet fever, her mother in Washington, D.C., nursing Mr. March through his war wounds, and her sisters sitting vigil at her bedside but clearly in over their heads? A pivotal moment, to be sure. Everyone remembers.
But do you remember the mention of all the service people and shop owners and community members who asked after the sick child, people who were nearly unknown to the busier, more outgoing sisters?
“Everyone missed Beth,” Louisa May Alcott explained. “The milkman, baker, grocer, and butcher inquired how she did, … the neighbors sent all sorts of comforts and good wishes, and even those who knew her best were surprised to find how many friends shy little Beth had made.”
Even as a child, I was struck by that sentence (and not just because of its strange, old-fashioned use of commas) and what it said about the human condition. Now, as an adult, I think often about how we seek and find connection, how we find it in unusual places, how we find it in spite of ourselves. It’s a thought that walks with me maybe even more as this pandemic drags on.
I first noticed this phenomenon of created community with my mother. When we would frequent a cozy, French-ish coffee shop downtown, there was always a young woman there, another customer, that my mother struck up some kind of friendly-ship with. She wore her long blonde hair in dreadlocks, pulled offof her sun-browned face and twisted into a pile on her head. She always wore long flowing skirts of natural fabrics and breezed into the shop, rings on her fingers and bells ringing on the door. She had a tow-headed toddler who came with her, also in baggy clothing and hard to look away from he was so cute.
They quit coming after awhile, and then a Starbucks sprang up near our house.
Now, as an adult, I think often about how we seek and find connection.
At that Starbucks, my mom began exchanging pleasantries with a man, slightly gray with a crazy swarm of butterflies tattooed up his leg. (Kaleidoscope, flutter, flight or wing — according to the Smithsonian, any of those lovely words work to describe a group of the lungless, clear-winged creatures.) He came in, day after day, with a baby in a car seat, his grandson it turned out, and ordered a big — oops, I mean, vendi — sweet drink. The two of them, cool grandpa and adorable baby, always left in a convertible. I still see the grandpa around sometimes, still at Starbucks, still is shorts that show off the tattoos. I suppose the baby is a grown man now.
Now my dad forms community.
Nearly 92, he has never been a joiner, content with a quiet life of family, work and purpose. No service clubs, although he did belong to the Kiwanis for a hot minute when he felt, or was told, he needed to make business connections. No veterans clubs, although he is certainly qualified to swap lies at the VFW and the American Legion. No book clubs or garden clubs or Sunday schools, although he is an avid reader, has a green thumb and, in some previous iterations of himself, was an usher, deacon and member of the building committee at churches throughout Colorado.
These days, honestly, he meets more of his longtime friends on the obituary page than he does at lunch or over a cup of coffee.
It’s a hard fact about being old.
But my father — and so many like him — has built a community of friends-albeit-strangers with people who share a desire for caffeine and arms-length camaraderie.
Before the pandemic forced everyone to stay at home, we would start many days with a doughnut and cup of coffee at a little “donut shop” down the road. We’ve been going there all, or almost all, of the 20 years it‘s been open. My parents. My visiting siblings and their spouses, their children. Sometimes friends. Sometimes colleagues. Sometimes, when he was still working, my dad would walk down the street on his morning breaks for the sweet treats. When my mom died a few years ago, the manager, who drew in customers with her big laugh, generous heart and commanding presence, cried with us and gave us free doughnuts.
On Friday mornings, a group of retired or nearly-retired men gathered there prepandemic at pushed-together tables to rehash the racquetball games they had just played at the senior center across the street. My dad knew one of them as the husband of a co-worker, another as a former volunteer for the nonprofit he himself had retired from, and they would exchange quips and jokes. Over the years, the group changed; new people joined, other people left; and as knees got old and hips were replaced, the racquetball games ended and wives joined the coffee klatsch.
Other familiar faces include:
► A Vietnam vet who used to sit at a tall table in the window, kind of holding court with a steady stream of acquaintances that came to the doughnut shop in search of a treat, and then he suddenly quit coming. He returned a couple of years later, walking with a cane, and took a seat at a lower table.
► The husband of a well-known sculptor. He first showed up there with his wife who was in the early stages of Lew-Body Dementia, still working and creating but quickly, sadly slipping away. He was attentive and devoted but also eager to share a few words with like-minded diners. His wife died some years ago, so now he comes alone, still advocating for her artwork, still eager to opine about politics and pastries, still seeking connection.
► A former Forest Service employee with wavy white hair that curls at his shoulders and a soft spot for a sporty VW. We first noticed him some years ago because he lives in a well-tended old house in our former neighborhood that my sister had a crush on. To be perfectly clear, my sister liked his house, but we called him “the boyfriend” anyway, never expecting to meet him, never expecting to know him, never expecting to have a conversation with him. But because of the coterie of strangers, now we know his name and his backstory and his car.
► A local author who writes, and rewrites, erotica about Santa and the Easter Bunny (I know!), pounding on a keyboard with two fingers. We bought the book. I haven’t read it. But I am more than happy to support his art because he is so patient with the interruptions from my father who doesn’t quite get that people actually work, on the clock, for a paycheck, at a coffee shop.
In the afternoons, sometimes, when we were out running errands, we used to stop at the bookstore for something sweet and sustaining. There was a man there who sat behind his laptop nearly every day, working on a late-in-life degree, a dog curled up under the table. At first, of course, we noticed the dog, a thick, friendly black Lab who was showing his age in the white hairs on his nose and the way he unfolded his legs when he got up to greet us, slow and kind of stiff. He carried a floppy Mallard duck in his mouth everywhere he went, like a baby or a biscuit, and he was hard to ignore when he dropped that tattered toy at your feet. Eventually the old dog quit coming and when we asked his owner about him, he said what we feared, that the arthritis got too bad and he had to be “put down.” About a year, a year and half, later, a puppy — Ranger — took the old dog’s place under the table. We were just beginning to be friends when the pandemic closed the bookstore’s coffee shop.
I saw Ranger and his owner in a grocery store parking lot a few weeks ago. They were getting out of their truck and I was wearing a mask, so the moment slipped away.
My dad got his second vaccine a few weeks ago, and I got my first shot this week. Maybe in six weeks we’ll be able to return to the restaurants and coffee shops. Maybe we’ll be able to sit and savor, but right now, the tables are still pushed against the walls and the chairs are on the tables. There are arrows on the floor guiding patrons in and out of the stores.
As my sister said last week, in a conversation that had nothing to do with this, it’s so easy to break habits and so hard to bring them back. So I don’t know if the community will come back when this virus is finally under control. I hope so.
For our part, we have traded trips to coffee shops for to-go cups and long drives in the country. I would miss those trips if they came to an end, and the way the foothills stand guard, benevolent and vigilant, the way the baby animals start showing up in the spring, the way the wide-open prairie expands my soul. But I would trade them (at least, some of them) for a cup of coffee at a table in a crowded shop where someone, just one someone, looks like someone I may have seen before.
Because I, like so many of us, hunger for connection in a closed-down world and I am eager. like Beth, to see the familiar faces of people I don’t quite know but still hold dear.
The Pie
My brother gave me a pie cookbook for Christmas, “Pie-ometry: Modern Tart Art and Pie Design for the Eye and Palate” by Lauren Ko. Ko says she’s not a baker, but she is definitely an artist, creating visual masterpieces with dough and nuts and fruit. Some of the recipes use ingredients that I’ve never heard of and couldn’t possibly find in a grocery store in Fort Collins, Colorado; some of them seem a little crust-heavy. But they’re so beautiful I decided I was up for a challenge. This past weekend, when my brother and his wife came by after a 15-month pandemic absence, I thought the occasion deserved a pie. From the cookbook he gave me, I cobbled together a crust recipe, a filling and a design I thought I could handle. The result: Raspberry-Lemonade Pie with Dragonfruit and a Coconut-Pecan Crust.
Dragonfruit, or pitahaya, it turns out, is the fruit of a cactus cultivated in southeast Asia, Central and South America and throughout tropical and subtropical regions across the world. It gets the name dragon from its leathery skin and prominent spikes, but is sometimes called a strawberry pear because of its dark pink color. Its white flesh, speckled with little black seeds, has the texture of watermelon but not the flavor. It is slightly sweet but mostly tasteless so it works well as a garnish.
Perfect for a long delayed reunion, this pie tasted like a summer party on the beach.
The Recipe
Raspberry-Lemonade Pie with Dragonfruit
Coconut-Pecan Crust:
1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1 cup whole shelled pecans
½ cup whole wheat flour
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
½ teaspoon kosher salt
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Spread the shredded coconut in an even layer on a rimmed baking sheet. Toast the coconut in the oven until golden brown and fragrant, about 3 minutes. Pour the toasted coconut into a food processor.
Spread the pecans in an even layer on the rimmed baking sheet. Toast in the oven for 3 to 5 minutes, until deepened in color but not dark. Add the pecans to the food processor.
Blitz the coconut and pecans until uniformly chopped into a sandy consistency.
Add flour, sugar and salt and mix until well blended.
Slowly add the butter and stir until the mixture comes together.
Turn the mixture out into a 9-inch tart pan (preferably with a removable bottom, but if you don’t have one like that, that’s OK). Press mixture firmly into the pan, going all the way up the sides (about ¼-inch thick) and then pressing evenly on the bottom.
Bake for about 25 minutes, until golden and crisp, on a baking sheet. (The baking sheet will catch any butter that drips out of the removable-bottom pan and will make it easier to remove the pan from the oven.) If the bottom crust puffs up during baking, use something like a flat-bottomed drinking glass to gently press it back down.
Keep in pan until completely cooled. Once the crust is completely cooled, you can fill it or place in the refrigerator, wrapped in plastic or placed in a sealed container, until ready to use.
Raspberry-Lemonade Curd
1 cup fresh red raspberries
½ cup lemon juice, from about 2 large lemons
Zest of one lemon
½ cup granulated sugar
½ teaspoon salt
2 large eggs plus 2 egg yolks
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into ½-inch cubes
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Press the raspberries through a fine-mesh sieve into a 2-quart saucepan using a rubber spatula, scraping to extract as much puree as possible. Discard the remaining seeds.
Add the lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, salt, eggs and egg yolks to the saucepan and whisk to combine. Cook over medium heat, until the mixture is warmed through. (Be careful not to use too high a temperature to avoid scrambling the eggs.) Add the butter a few pieces at a time and stir until it's melted. Continue cooking until the mixture is thick enough to coat a spatula, about 5 to 8 minutes, stirring and scraping the sides and bottom of the pan.
Remove from the heat and strain through a mesh sieve.
Keeping the baked tart shell in the pan, pour the curd into the shell and smooth the top.
Bake the tart for 5-10 minutes on a baking sheet, just long enough to set the filling.
Cool completely in the refrigerator before decorating or serving, at least 4 hours.
Decorate with sliced dragon fruit cut into ¼-inch wide sticks.
Lovely piece Erin! I too look forward to being able to actively engage in more community oriented activities. They truly forge a commonality of spirit and support that we so deeply need in these times.