I am presently back in the US on a short vacation before heading to Vermont to participate in the Stellafane Convention. In what has been an intense and extremely busy year, this has been a few days of much needed rest and peace. After exercising in a state park yesterday, my partner and I decided to go out for lunch in a nearby coastal town. This simple act became a small window into the state of American civility.
We parked the car and took a short stroll down the street to a cafe that became a favourite of ours in the last couple of years. The cafe has a good selection of coffees (of course) and a small but excellent selection of food. We were at the back of a short line when we walked into the place, but the person working the cash registers (whom we later found out was the co-owner) was stepping back and forth between the registers, taking the next order while the previous group paid. We quickly found ourselves at the front of the line.
I like to start a transaction at a restaurant with a greeting, a positive statement about being at the establishment, and an inquiry as to how the person in front of me is doing. This is nothing special … it’s just a social strategy I’ve developed in the last 10 years to ease into the transaction. I don’t like “being all business” when I start talking to another human being. (this is, in part, because I don’t like people starting a conversation with me by jumping straight into business) I am working hard to value people more as I age and be better than just “transactional”, even in a business setting like this.
The co-owner engaged in a brief bit of chit chat in response to my opening, we got to our orders, and we paid. The drinks came out first, so I brought those to the outdoor patio table selected by my partner. I went back inside for the food and waited off to the side of the counter. I noticed that the co-owner had been running back and forth from the counter to deliver food, including to the patio, so I decided to hang out to save her the walk.
When the food was ready, she didn’t notice me standing there and she headed out to the patio, so I just followed behind her several steps later. My partner and I enjoyed our meal and had some good conversation. Being in no hurry, I suggested we order some coffees and continue to chat, and she agreed.
I went back in and was the first person at the counter, so I put in the coffee order: a medium cafe au lait with decaf coffee (there was some chit chat here about whether that was a choice, and what was my milk choice) and a cortado (also with a short discussion of milk choice). The person working the counter now was a man, whom I later came to learn was the owner. He went behind the counter to prep the order, and moments later came back with a medium cup with a lid on it. “Decaf coffee” he said before sharply turning back to make the cortado.
I began to suspect this wasn’t a cafe au lait, so I gently popped the lid and was greeted by a cup of black coffee. When the owner came back with the cortado, I gently said, “I think this was supposed to be a cafe au lait.” The owner paused and said, “Oh, yeah, we talked about your milk choice. No idea what I was thinking.”
I smiled. “Sounds like it’s Monday.” (it was, in fact, Monday)
We exchange a brief bit of pleasant chit chat about the horrors of Mondays as he went back and made the cafe au lait with steamed whole milk. I paid, thanked him, and took the coffee back out to the patio.
This was where things got … unexpected.
The co-owner, who took and delivered our food orders, came out a short time later. She walked up to us and said, “The owner, my husband, and I just think you were both so nice. We are so grateful for how kind you were to us today, and we wanted to give you a gift card.”
We didn’t know what to say. I mean, nothing we did was anything different than what our parents trained us to be and do, nor any different than what our parents expected of us as members of a normal civil society.
And, yet, here was the co-owner of a cafe in a wealthy coastal American town handing us a gift card because … well, because we were nice to the two owners.
We thanked her and exchanged some chit chat on how it wasn’t necessary and we were just being us, and that we really like this cafe. But she insisted, and you never refuse a gift more than once. So we accepted the card.
After she walked away, I slid the card out of its sleeve and gasped. “This is for fifty dollars,” I said.
The rest of our conversation at the cafe was about this card, this gesture, and the reason for it … and what was likely an unreasonable extrapolation to the state of American civil society.
When we moved to Canada, we left behind us an American state that was cracking down on the rights of women and minorities, banning books in public schools, and continuing to actively sow doubt in expertise and disregard for evidence. However, that state was far from the one in which we were drinking our coffee. The present state is more progressive, more open. In particular, the town was a wealthy and educated coastal one, a tourist destination for sure but also a place that takes a lot of pride in its downtown. And yet, here was a couple running a lovely cafe who felt compelled to hand out a $50 gift card to two customers who had simply … been nice to them.
It’s risky to stretch this to mean something more than it is, but this little puzzle piece feels like it connects to a much larger picture of the cracks in American society. There is a lot of pain in the US, a lot of strain on the social bonds that once linked a country of disparate states. There is a lot of othering, of weaponizing concepts like anti-racism and anti-semitism and twisting them to mean the opposite. There is a lot of hate for people who don’t look like the mythological conceit of the American. There is fear, there is mistrust, and there is misery.
I can’t help but to wonder if this moment, this gift card, this act of one kindness in response to another, is the passing of a message in the dark between two couples desperate for some kind of normal human bond … normal human dignity … in a place that is otherwise savaged by hate, incivility, and deep cracks in the foundations of the very form of government that once provided the long arc away from those horrors.
