My top ten of being a dad would no doubt include a moment my daughter and I shared at the Monterey, California Peet’s Coffee when she was either 3 or 4. I woke early in the morning—as is my wont when on vacation—to have a moment to myself while I had my coffee, and then to wander around in the dawn a little before coming back to the hotel as everyone else woke up. I was as quiet as possible as I slipped my clothes on and looked around in the disorder of luggage, clothes, and unfamiliar living arraignments for my book and shoes.
My daughter was either already awake, or she woke up and asked what I was doing. She’s usually not very interested in exploration; she’d prefer to stay at home, but that morning the prospect of staying the room while everyone else slept was likely too dull a prospect. She agreed to come along with me. I grabbed her Dog Man book to bring with my own. My wife and infant son slept on as we gently eased the heavy hotel door closed behind us.
Monterey sort of slopes down to ocean. We were staying up the slope and took a series of stairs and walkways through the sleeping pinkish town under canopies of familiar trees rendered unfamiliar by their age and position among the 200-year-old adobe of the Spanish administration. The sun rising behind us, our shadows stretched out almost preternaturally in front of us in the almost tropically clear light.
Peet’s has been my favorite chain place to get coffee since a trip to La Jolla just before my daughter was born, just before becoming a dad. My wife and I had been swimming in the ocean. We came out of the water into a bright and hot afternoon. Peet’s was the first café we saw. She got an iced coffee, but I’ve always enjoyed hot coffee on a hot day. Maybe it was the swimming- and sun-induced languor, maybe it was the warm salt air, but walking through incredibly bourgeois La Jolla, I felt like one of the upper classes enjoying such a great-tasting coffee and I’ve been going back ever since, though admittedly never quite recreating the experience.
The Peet’s in Monterey is right downtown, a small area that is both touristy and practical, and in the morning frantic with sea gull cries on stillness. On the way down, I’d been considering different emotions. Was I slightly annoyed that I wasn’t going to get my quiet moment in the morning with my book and coffee, or was I happy to have my daughter with me, even if she only had the patience to stay in the café about five minutes and wouldn’t want anything they had? My kids always seem to think they like hot chocolate, but I’ve never seen them actually finish a cup of it. Would the café be an alien, uncomfortable, and boring place to her that she would bug me to leave right away or, given the early hour, could she hang out long enough looking through Dog Man to let me drink a full cup of coffee?
These scenarios rattled in my head as we came in the back door through the parking lot and walked the hallway past the bathrooms into the small area with counters and chairs. They’d just opened and only one of the five or six tables was taken already. The place was dim and the music turned down as any good café is.
We held hands while waiting in line, and at the counter I had the inspiration to buy a brownie since they can’t be spilled and would probably be more interesting. We sat at the table for a moment, regarding each other face-to-face and I realized as I so often do when I take the trouble to look someone in my family in the face, that I don’t do it nearly enough: there’s so much to see and appreciate there. My daughter was regarding me in almost the same way, her clear eyes, her small features, this little, new person. What did she see when she looked at me? We tried conversation for a while, but it was a bit too early for that and after we had lapsed back into silence, she smiled at me as if to show that she was alright with not talking for a while.
“Do you want to read our books for a little bit?” I asked.
She nodded and picked up her Dog Man. For the next 30 minutes or so, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt prouder. Truth is, I wasn’t even able to pay much attention to my book. My thoughts kept going back to the tableau we must’ve made: man and very young child sitting in early morning weekend café, reading at a small table together like old friends, like people who are completely comfortable in each other’s company.
…
I had my first serious thoughts of having kids in 2016 when I was hiking the Appalachian Trail. Long days of walking through forest, though varied in terrain, flora, fauna, etc., still offer the mind an opportunity to take the focus off much of the exterior world and turn inward. Somewhere in Virginia, probably about six weeks in, I started imagining hiking with a child. Gradually in this daydream the child became my child and as we hiked, we held hands. This thought kept coming back to me, sometimes with such especial clarity, I could almost feel the little hand in mine. And the more the thought came back, it was like reaching into the future to touch what would be, and the concept of having children lost a lot of the uncertainty which had always made it seem rash and unlikely for me. By the time I got to Maine, I was ready to talk about it seriously.
…
In that moment, sitting across from each other at the Peet’s, it felt like that trail vision had come to fruition. We weren’t walking through a forest and holding hands, but we were sharing this moment of quiet trust and interdependence. Each time I took a drink of coffee, I glanced over at her and watched her quietly studying the pages of her book and, like a true café habitué, pick up her brownie without taking her eyes off the page she was on. It would have been difficult not to imagine her as an adult doing the same, and, in thinking of this, I gained an appreciation of what it was like for my parents when visiting me in the present. To see someone you had watched grow from an infant to a capable, and better yet, thinking adult. Wow. What would it be like to visit my daughter when she was 35? but no, here I was in the moment. She is three, perhaps recording this memory for future consideration. I hope so, it was one of my best because I was just so solidly there with her. Not questioning, or suggesting, or lecturing, as it’s impossible to avoid most of the time as a parent, but just there with her sharing the moment.
And if she remembers that moment with all the clarity and wonder I ascribe to it, perhaps it will yet be repeated if she has children. Perhaps it will be something she will hope to share with her own child: a moment of quiet, mutual understanding. After all, what more could we possibly ask of our children than to understand us in turn?
…
That visit to Peet’s was years ago. My daughter is now seven and has begun reading Charlotte’s Web on her own. In just a few evenings of reading before bed, she is already most of the way through the book. She sits up in her bed, her finger tracing over those all-important words which make up what amounts to the United States’ cultural introduction to empathy—thus required reading. I wonder what impression it could possibly have on a child already so empathetic. Hopefully, we’ll have a moment to visit a café soon so maybe in addition to reading together, she can tell me about what she’s read and what’s it’s meant to her.
