Cocktails and Coffee
Community is built sometimes over cocktails but maybe more often over coffee.
What a night! We hosted friends at our home on Thursday night last week. All the regular cocktail party cliches attended; the lampshade guy who sang an 80s hair band song a capella , the flirty flirt who made the wives a tiny bit uncomfortable, the person who drank a little too much and overshared some personal laundry — I should note that the laundry wasn’t dirty but maybe worn once and thrown over a chair so you could definitely wear it again. Thankfully no real harm was done.
And the reason we had the cocktail party in the first place: to see our community of friends in a relaxed and safe environment. We wanted to have the warm conversations about shared history and express the longing for more time together. It’s so hard to find time to get together and really talk but having everyone over at one time doesn’t solve this problem. You never get to have all the conversations you want to have with all of the people you want to have them with. There was at least one conversation that I had where I wished I could have closed the party down and thrown everyone else out to sit with this person for three days because of what she was going through. But it was a cocktail party, and I was the hostess, so I had to extract myself to solve a garnish issue that turned into making a batch of cosmopolitans…you know the drill.
This morning as I write this post in a warm little coffee shop in Saint Charles, Illinois, I can overhear (rude, you say? Shut it) other patrons having coffee with friends and catching up on their lives. It’s the holidays, so more than one person has shown up with little gift bags containing tokens of friendship over time. There are an alarming number of evergreen twigs attached to these bags. The air is actually scented by them.
Two young women are sitting on a porch swing that has inexplicably been installed inside this charming shop overlooking the Fox River. They are sitting with their legs crossed like children and facing one another. They are leaning toward one another and there is a lot of smiling and head nodding and genuine belly laughs. I’m so jealous, that I keep frowning at them. I would love to be sitting with a good friend like that, with time to listen and laugh deeply. Their faces contain none of the angst of adult life so I’m guessing they are home from their different college towns. Sigh.
As the obligations, to do lists, and mandatory visits of the holidays wind down I’m going to make a conscious decision to have coffee with a friend. Someone who can make my stomach muscles ache from laughing. In fact, I may roll that into my 2026 resolutions. Having coffee with a friend once a month in 2026. God knows I have a thousand cozy coffee shops to visit in the year ahead..fortunately most are free of cosmopolitan emergencies.