Being Connected - Sue

The smell of roasting coffee beans hovers in the hot wind and sucks me into the café. I sigh. I just love coffee, a creamy soft and thick piccolo latte with a delicate leaf engraved in the cream. I take tiny mouthfuls to make it last and swill it around my tongue, tasting every tiny grain.

Its not just about the coffee, this foray into the latte scene is also about being in the midst of a noisy, happy bunch of people. It’s infectious. The exciting chatter as people share stories, the ‘clink’ of the glasses, although it’s still only early, and the gaggle of waiters who bounce from table to table. It doesn’t take long and I’m chatting to the girl next to me. Her eyes light up as she shares about “the Big Day Out” and her sailing escapades across the harbour. She’s from Ireland. We share how our accents have changed, we share about our families back home, we share about the dull grey skies, the rain and the cold at Christmas. We laugh. We are connected for a few special hours.

A flowerhead shimmers in the glare of the sun. The petals are soft like baby’s hair and are delicately painted white with a bight pink edge. Sometimes the pink smears a bit like a smudge, a fairy kiss. Many petals form a flower, tied together by the tiniest of dark red spindly stamens to attract the bees. As I capture the minute detail of the flower, I’m connected in such a way that nothing else is present.

The desert is the same, made up of millions and millions of tiny grains of orange sand. The sea is the same, each drop of water colliding to create oceans and waves. Just stopping for a moment to get present is really what stirs me.

Now back to my people world. Those glorious fun loving friends, where I share my triumphs but also my woes. Where everything is safe, where no one intrudes, where our eyes sparkle and reflect in each others faces, where crinkles escape from our eyes as we laugh. I love the pain of that ferocious lion like laugh which tumbles and turns. Just looking at each other and we explode. It’s rare this uncontrollable fit of the giggles but oh how special to be connected so freely that its allowed to escape.

The man in my life is a dream. We click, we’re as one. Like two peas in a pod, we’ve been told. We share, we get sad. We get angry, we make up. We hold hands wherever we go. Out fingers entwine and belong. There’s a certain glance, a definite shift of his eyes, a wicked sort of a grin and my tummy somersaults and spins on itself. I giggle to myself as I try to find exactly the right words. We are surely connected, we are surely in love. That cheeky look does it every time.

Now I’m present to coffee time, who knows, I might make another new friend.