Journeys – Part 3

There was a knock on the kitchen window, and I looked up to see Colin standing there. He motioned for me to come outside.

I opened the door and smiled. “Colin, come on in. Do you want some coffee?”

“Well, actually, I do,” he said, “but I can’t figure out how to use the new coffee maker. Would you be able to come over and show me?”

I laughed. “Sure. Where’s Angela?”

“Out with her sister,” he said. “Left quite early.”

“Frank!” I called up toward the upstairs apartment.

“Yeah?” he answered.

He was working on the bathroom upstairs, trying to figure out where a leak was coming from. Water had been dripping into the kitchen from the shower above.

“I’m going across the street to help Colin.”

“You’re going to help Colin?” he asked.

“Yes,” Colin answered. “She’s going to help me out in the kitchen a little bit.”

We heard Frank’s footsteps coming down the stairs. He appeared in the kitchen, laughing.

“You need some help in the kitchen?”

“Yes,” Colin said. “I need a little assistance. The wife bought a new coffee maker, and I have no idea how it works.”

We all smiled.

“Okay,” Frank said. “Happy coffee making. I’ll be here.”

I walked out with Colin, and we crossed the street to his house.

There were several cats sitting out front waiting for breakfast.

“I guess those are yours?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “Those are my cats. They come and go. They’re free to wander. They found their way here somehow, and now they have a home with us.”

We walked up the stone pathway, and Colin pushed open the heavy wooden door.

“It’s in there,” he said, motioning toward the kitchen.

The living room was small, but the dining room was large, with a huge fireplace in the center. The house is older than ours, I thought.

“The dining room is amazing,” I said. “I love the fireplace.”

“Yeah,” he replied. “We don’t use any oil. We heat the house with the fireplaces.”

I smiled.

“Okay, where’s your coffee?”

“Here it is.”

He opened a cabinet and showed me a can of ground coffee.

“Well, it’s really not too hard, Colin,” I said, flipping open the top of the machine. “Look. There’s a mesh filter inside. You don’t need a paper filter or anything. It’s fine the way it is.”

“Do you want a full pot?”

“Yeah, definitely a full pot,” he said. “That sounds good. Will you have a cup with me?”

“Sure.”

I filled the reservoir with water from the tap and started the coffee maker.

“Come here,” he said. “I want to show you something. We added a little addition onto the house. One of our daughters put the tile down for us, and we added a bathroom in here too.”

I followed him into a sunlit room with skylights and terracotta tile floors.

“Wow, it’s beautiful,” I said.

“Yeah. We really needed to add this on. We don’t always like going upstairs. We love this room.”

“I can see why.”

“Oh, and there’s a little stream that runs under the house. At night, when it’s really quiet, we can hear the water running through. It’s peaceful.”

I smiled.

There were huge brown leather couches in the room, covered with woven blankets.

He pointed to one.

“This one my mom made for me. She made it for my pony. It’s my pony blanket.”

“My mom was a Plains Indian. I was born in Kansas. I think I mentioned that you look like her.” “Yeah, you mentioned that.”

“My dad was Irish, and he was a merchant seaman. He’d be gone for long periods when I was growing up. My parents both worked hard. They had a small farm, and all of us kids helped out. When I was little, I had to drive the pickup truck while they piled hay into the back.”

He laughed.

“I don’t think that would happen today.”

I nodded in agreement.

“My mom rode a motorbike too. For a while she traveled with a carnival. She rode on the Wall of Death. She was a stunt rider.”

I smiled.

“That sounds interesting.”

“Yeah,” he said. “It was a great time to grow up. It was great being outside a city and having a childhood like that.”

He paused for a moment.

“Eventually my parents moved to California. I worked there too. I got a scholarship to go to school, and then I started writing professionally. After that a PHD and college professor here

“Oh,” I said. “That’s really interesting.”

“Yeah, Angela and I are both writers. That’s where I met her.”

“That sounds wonderful.”

“It was. Simpler times. You could be different without really standing out. I was a poet and a beat.”

He smiled.

“Today I think everybody is more focused on being the same. But being the same doesn’t get you anywhere. It just makes you conform. Great art, great writing, and a great life come from being different—from taking risks and doing what you want to do. It’s about being who you are. It’s about authenticity.”

I smiled.

“Let’s have some coffee. I’m pretty sure it’s done by now.”

He smiled back.

“Yeah, let’s have some coffee.”

As we walked back toward the kitchen, he pointed to the blanket again.

“So, you like the pony blanket?”

“Of course I like the blanket.”

“Well, if you like it, it could be yours.”

I stepped back.

“No, your mom made that for you.”

“Yeah,” he said softly, “but for some reason, I want you to have it.”

“I’m not sure I can take that.”

“No, I’m sure you can.”

He picked it up, folded it carefully in half, and handed it to me.

“I know you’ll take good care of it.”