Market Street

I said I didn't want to work on Market Street because that would be too cliche. It's a year later, a year I spent working on Market Street. It's over now, but a year was long enough for that street to become my community.

I've experienced community, lots. Community was firemen from a bunch of different counties arriving at 5AM years ago, and John risking his life as he single handedly pulled the propane tank away from the burning house, a property up the road we rented out and used as an office. Community was when my dad had all his strokes and kept almost dying and people showed up at the door with food and checks. Verna, an older woman, bless her heart, baked us six loaves of bread every week for months. Community was a few weeks ago with my friends, cooking together in the kitchen and then sitting around a fire before two of them go back to Africa and one of them goes back to the Middle East. Community was in that white country church under a blue sky last week when we recognized that the end of a grandma's life is so much more than an urn full of ashes.

However, for me, Market Street was a different kind of community because I had to work to be a part of it. All other communities I've been born into, both physically and spiritually. All of them, to a certain extent, were instant. Market Street, on the other hand, was not instant. It took time. Though it opened its arms quickly like any community should, it closed them slowly.

It's only now that I'm leaving that I know what I'm leaving: people who acknowledge my existence and make me feel like I'm a part of something bigger than me. People who, if I was in a jam, might just stick up for me.

I could tear up. It's such a special thing and I don't want to take it for granted.

It all really sank in last week. I was sitting in the back corner of Soulful in a comfy chair, after my dentist appointment and before work. I was reading a few lines from my book occasionally, half asleep despite the almost empty mug of coffee balanced between my thighs. A bunch of older people in the opposite corner, most of them familiar faces and even some I could name, were enjoying their morning coffee and talking politics. One man said he thinks he'll live to see the day America is no longer united. We have too much diversity for our own good, or something. There was some agreement, some murmured dissent. I just liked it a lot, because if old people's politics included anything but worries over the states disbanding, I'd be worried.

Meanwhile, the barista, with a coffee shop posture known the world over, leaned her forearms on the counter and showed off her manicure to a regular customer. He joked about meaning to get a mani/pedi one of these days. Conversation turned and she said she needed to lose ten pounds. The man, as other women have taught him, replied "No you don't. Not a whole ten." She allowed herself the admission that she at least hides it well.

The meter man walked through for the second time, catching my attention. I'm starting to wonder if he doesn't work, either. I see his cronies hanging out with their cellphones in the info center all the time. If it wasn't that my friend got a parking ticket last week I'd question how much they actually work.

Back in the corner, the older people's wives had gotten up, so it was just men now. Conversation had turned to facial hair and how short a time it took one of them to grow his beard, how long a time for another to grow his scruff and when's last they all shaved. Just like I hear teenage boys talk all the time. I swear, men never grow up. It's really not fair.

I liked sitting there. I liked all the feelings I was feeling. I was comfortable, safe, a little bit... home.

One week after that realization, of course it's time to leave.

Also of course, leaving means arriving some place else and I am pretty darn happy about my destination and all it will offer and let me give. And I am not at all sorry to leave waitressing with its angry words and unhappy people behind. But even if its cliche, I'll shamelessly let Market Street and its back alleys occupy a place in my heart.