Local Coffee Shop

There’s this coffee shop one block from my house that’s owned by this couple, Desiree and Mike. They pull one of the best espresso shots outside of Australia, where my love of coffee bloomed into existence when I lived there in 2011. Anyway, as you can tell, Desiree, Mike, and I are on a first-name basis, and despite me being just one of their many patrons, they remember specifics about my life. I wouldn’t consider them friends, but we’ve transcended the chasm of transactional strangerhood and entered this rare and comforting solidarity of people who are loosely known to one another and whose lives afford opportunities to regularly, but not deeply, intersect. There is a satisfaction often under-appreciated in the low-touch relationships in our lives that sustain themselves without any pressure for them to be anything more or less than they are.