What the Coffee-Shop Owner Said

Yeah, I know Sam. Really just an over-sized, over-emotional kid, that one is. Lets his passions run rampant in public. He's been coming in here, oh, I'd say about a year and a half or so now. Comes in about 6:15 each morning. Good thing too. Not many customers around that early. And he's always got something to say, something, I don't know what you'd call it, obtuse, maybe. I can never quite tell if he's really dumb or really bright. He gets a little riled up sometimes, starts raising his voice, and I guess I never kicked him out because to me he's just a mad little boy, a mad kid kicking and screaming and refusing to die.

Now, I'm twenty-five years older than Sam, I think, and for some reason he holds me and my wife accountable for, you know, for the way things are today. I know we're not the only ones, but sometimes he leaves me wondering if he's really got anyone else to talk to. Usually, his visits are brief, just long enough for me to make him some coffee, and, of course, for the "daily doozy," as my wife and I have come to call it--the unanswerable question he presents each morning which somehow sets the mood for rest of the day.

The first time I met Sam, our conversation couldn't have lasted more than 30 seconds, but I still remember it clearly. I said, "What can I get you, son?"

He said, "Large coffee to go."

"Sure thing, coming right up," I replied.

He stood there in front of the register for a minute and then asked, "Say, mister, do you stay here, where you are, just because it would take too much effort to leave, or is this actually the way you always pictured your life would turn out?"

An older couple was in for breakfast. They looked up from their eggs to see what kind of a stranger would ask such a bold question. I didn't know what to say. "I don't know," I said.

Sam then went on to make it quite clear that, if I wasn't sure why I was here, he felt strongly I should consider leaving, at least for a little while. He suggested India, if I remember correctly.

I bet by now, after our numerous encounters over the weeks and months, that he has a better idea why is I continue to cling to this, my own particular clod of earth here. I know I myself have come to understand Sam a little better--a little--bit by bit. Here's what I've concluded:

Sam wants to know why we, the older ones, always made him think we had the answers.

"Why'd you do it, Frank, why'd you make me think that?" he has asked out loud. My wife and I, we just try to smile and mumble something or other, to change the subject or act too busy to chat. We go on pretending we still remember how to be our own kind of hyper kids screaming and refusing to die. Knowing we don't have the answers.

He said once, "You tell the kids you've got it all figured out. Then they get older and almost figure out for themselves that you haven't been hiding the answers. It's just that you didn't have them to begin with. You never did have the answers, did you Frank?"

"What answers?" I asked.

"Well, the ones about space and time for starters. Can we live without time, Frank?"

I have never known what to say.

"What about chance and luck, Frank? You happen upon the people around you by chance, share some time and space with them for a while, and then, by chance again, you are gone. Is chance a thing you can hold in your hands, Frank?"

The last time I saw Sam, he looked a little more frantic than usual, like on his own internal clock, his days were getting shorter and shorter. He doesn't say much anymore, but I think there must be some medical term for what he's got. It's like he's stuck in a metaphysical vacuum or something. All the questions in the universe are flying past his ears at a million miles a second, and he's just trying to dampen the noise--you know, as if, maybe by talking back to the questions, the sound waves will cancel each other out.

I'm not sure if he'll ever pull all the pieces together. Or rather, I guess I'm sure that he won't. Whether or not he'll learn to live with the uncertainties is the real question. For now, he keeps coming in for his coffee. My wife and I keep pretending we really do know for sure where home is. We keep pretending we stay where we are are because we are just so certain we are home.

Say, listen, I haven't seen Sam for a few weeks now, so if you run into him, do me a favor and tell him this for me. This is what I've wanted to say all along but could never find the words for:

My love for my wife has not grown more distant, as you put it, Sam. I mean it has, but only in the sense that the depth now from the surface to the very bottom is many fathoms--the time and space we share are deeper.

We are deeper together because we clearly recognize there are real distances between us, vast open spaces surrounding us. We see, therefore, the desperate need we really have for each other. We are deeper because we remember the chances we have taken and not taken. We feel strongly that the minute-to-minute chances are too slim and too precious to let go of. We hold on to what we've got because there is no going back. And because some day our luck will run dry.