FINDING YOUR STARBUCKS

“Remember when we used to travel?!” (I hope that’s not a phrase we will be using in a year or two.) Well, I have an admission: on youthful sojourns to faraway lands, I would always surrender to Starbucks. And that’s when I knew it was time to come home. Why Starbucks? Because it was always the same. The same rocket fuel coffee that seared my insides. The same curated playlists. The same pretentious cup sizes. Starbucks, everywhere, was a familiar territory in otherwise foreign lands. It provided a sense of continuity from one continent to the next. From one point in time to another. Starbucks was a soothing vacuum-sealed time capsule within changing landscapes.

In the last few weeks, we have all been searching for our metaphorical Starbucks. We already feel weary from this crazy trip that has launched us many miles away from normal. We feel tired and scared and want to proverbially return home. One client shared her sadness about a TV series coming to an end. To her, this concretely reflected the passage of time. The end of this series that she was watching pre-pandemic coincided with an inalienable change in history. She wanted to hold on to that thread she found in that hour a day connecting her from then to now. Starbucks is literally no longer an option. All of us must figure new ways to find comfort. I feel privileged to be able to tuck away on our family farm. This property has a past that is complicated and sad. But, it is a place I have known since I could crawl in its dusty crevices.

Loved ones have died, cherished homes have been sold, but this structure has remained constant: peeling paint, rotting wood, sluggish houseflies and surreal sunsets.

Not glamorous, but grounding. Quiet is interrupted only by the sound of a train. Country roads are empty just as they have always been – unlike the newly emptied ghost-town that was once our frantic city. As a child, this farm felt vast and lonely. Now, it is comforting in all that’s unchanged.

My finger strokes on this keyboard, my clients, my students, and my unknowing pets also provide a sense of the familiar – they are threads that hold together the fabric of the back then to the new now.

For my husband, his “Starbucks” is cooking. For my mother, it’s baking. (Hmm, no wonder even elasticized pants feel tight.) For others, it might be painting or a movie that returns them temporarily to less fraught times.

Comfort can be found in the smell of a meal or in the pages of an old book. It can be found in a song, or in an old sweater. Whatever your medicine, I hope you find your Starbucks and that which makes you feel safely back at home.