How She Takes Her Coffee
By Katie Blackburn
@katiemblackburn
I had just put the last of the lunch dishes away when my phone lit up with a message on the kitchen counter. “There’s a little treat on your porch. I didn’t want to wake the baby so I didn’t knock. Love you.”
I set the phone down after reading her text, and went to the front door to find an iced, decaf caramel latte on top of the welcome mat.
“Friend!” I texted back, “This just made my afternoon, thank you so much! And you remembered to make it decaf!”
“You always drink decaf in the afternoon.” She responded, followed with a little yellow emoji smiling back at me.
She was right. I do only drink decaf in the afternoon.
She noticed.
***
Four years ago, as my husband and I were in the thick of the new-diagnosis stage of special needs with our two-year-old, we attended a conference a few hours away where a specialist in this new field we had been thrown into was presenting. In some ways, it was a getaway for us: we had a hotel room, no children, and two nights where the hours between 5pm and 9pm were wide open in a big city and there was no one to bathe and put to bed.
The hours before that, though, were hard. We watched video after video of children diagnosed with the same thing our son had been, and the reality of what life for him and for us might look like each day settled in with more weight each hour. We learned about therapies and gathered ideas and talked to a lot of other parents and professionals who knew more than we did. It was what we needed, but it wasn’t easy. We didn’t feel much of that night on the town mood by the end of the day.
On the second morning, as we found our seats at the table for another day of learning, I took out my notepad and pen, and then grabbed my phone from my purse. There on the screen was Emily’s name, checking in to see how it was going.
“It’s good,” I typed out, “You know, if you are the type of person who likes reality checks and lectures.”
She sensed my sarcasm, reminded me that classrooms and lectures are actually right up my alley (and they are) and then finished with this: “I’ll let you get back, but I want you to know, you are doing a great job with an incredibly tough assignment. I’m so proud of you.”
I could barely see the slides I was supposed to be taking notes from for the next ten minutes as I tried to keep my eyes from filling with tears. I didn’t want pity, I didn’t need anyone to try and fix what couldn’t be fixed, but I had no idea how much I wanted a friend to tell me exactly what she did in that moment.
She saw me.
***
When I was in eighth grade, I found myself sitting next to my algebra teacher at an after school basketball game as she kept the score for our small school. During the halftime break, she sensed something was bothering me, and asked about it.
I can’t recall everything that was troubling me on that day or why, but I lamented to her about the middle school friendship troubles I was having, and while the details are fuzzy, I do remember the hurt was real, and Mrs. K saw it.
“Friendships are not easy, Katie. We are going to let each other down our whole lives. But can I tell you something my mom told me when I was younger?”
“Sure,” I said, I’m certain with no shortage of teenage presumption that a forty-year-old algebra teacher could not possibly know a thing about friendship.
Undeterred, Mrs K. went on. “At the end of your life, if you can count the number of people on one hand who truly know and care about you, you’ll be a lucky girl.”
I glanced down at my hand. Five, only five? I thought to myself. Mrs. K must have noticed my dissatisfaction at that low number - I was an aspiring class president, surely I was going to need more than five friends - but before I said anything, she continued.
“Now, you might have a few more, you might have a few less. But the point is, you want to find the people in your life who really know you, Katie, who take the time to. And the best way to find those people is to be one yourself.”
My memory of this conversation stops here. I don’t know how I reacted, if I thanked her, secretly rolled my eyes at her, or what brought our attention back to the basketball game. I also don’t remember what school was like the next day, if the friendship problems were solved or if they dragged on. I only remember what she told me. More than twenty years later, I also know she was right.
As life, work, marriage and motherhood have continued to fill my plate more and more, I see exactly what Mrs. K meant about having a small number of people who really know and care about you. When it comes to friendships, depth means more than breadth. You can have thousands of “followers”, but that has nothing on having even one person who will show up for you every time, who will ask you where you’re struggling and then ask again later, who will laugh and cry and celebrate and remind you that it’s ok to not always have an answer, and who knows exactly how you like your coffee, and leaves it on your front porch for you.
We all want to be known like that. And it’s worth doing the work to know someone like that.
As Charity told Phineas in The Greatest Showman, “You don’t need everyone to love you, Phinn. Just a few good people.”
***
We saw each other in the carpool line after school, my mini van parked next to the curb by the playground and her’s across the street, where we could always be found at 3:00pm on a weekday. As was our Friday routine, Kelly got out of her car to run across the street and sit in my front seat until the bell rang - our fifteen minute “car dates” - as we liked to call them.
But on this gray and chilly December Friday, she was running across the street with two mylar balloons in her hand, one a silver and pink flower and the other declaring “Happy Birthday” in rainbow letters. I smiled and shook my head as she ducked out of the misty rain and into the car, pulling the balloons safely in with her.
“You didn’t!” I said to her.
“What? It’s her birthday, of course I did!”
And when my first grade daughter, fresh off a class party and wearing a paper birthday crown, came out of the school gate and saw my friend standing outside our van with balloons, her face lit up with delight and she ran into her arms for a hug.
“Happy birthday, sweet girl,” she squeezed her as she put the balloon strings in Harper’s hand.
She remembered, and not just me, but my daughter; and she taught her what it feels like to be remembered.
And it feels so wonderful to be remembered.
***
I know someday my kids will have their friendship struggles because no one gets through life without them. Kindness won’t be reciprocated, gossip will go around, feelings will be hurt, and someone will feel left out. (This, unfortunately, happens with grown-ups, too.)
But as I pray for my kids and the friendships they will have in their lives, both now and as they grow, I’m praying that they will be noticers, and that God will give them friends who notice; that they will see people and what they are holding in their lives, and that others will see them; that they will remember dates and appointments and important events in their friends’ lives, and that God would give them people who do the same.
I’m praying for coffee, words of encouragement, and balloons, and for just a few good people.
Words and photo by Katie Blackburn.