I always introduce Faith as a curmudgeon when I talk about Coffee with a Beat and why I keep returning. It’s an accurate, but shallow description of a complicated woman who was my friend and I will always remember with a warm heart.
I met Faith when I moved into the neighborhood and found the coffee shop within walking distance of my home. Every morning I’d show up with my two cocker spaniels and sit outside with them while I ate my breakfast, nursing a resentment of having to leave my coffee shop in Alameda where I had a cadre of regulars who petted my dogs and followed my crazy life as we drank coffee at ate baked goods hot out of the oven. Every morning, Faith sat in the same chair, inside, nursing a cup of coffee, looking out at the lake and reading her Chronicle. We started off with a nodding acquaintance.
Weekends were livelier than weekdays, and I stayed longer, eventually venturing inside and meeting the regulars. Faith was joined by Sunny and Kathy, who invited me to join them one day. I found a group of smart, interesting women involved in their community and the world. Conversation was a lively mix of politics, current events, Oakland happenings, and the takeover of technology. A self-proclaimed Luddite, Faith hated computers. The women introduced me to fascinating people as they stopped by the table to say hello. Coffee with a Beat attracts people from all walks of life and I learned to dig behind the congenial facades to find movers and shakers in the Oakland community. Gradually, I moved inside, leaving my dogs tied up at the table by the door as fuzzy welcomers, and joined the community.
Often it was just Faith and I in the early mornings, sometimes waiting for Nate to open up. I learned to see past her gruff exterior and into a person of great depth. Intelligent and quick, she had a breadth of knowledge that often took my breath away. She beat throat cancer and refused to be stopped by the limitations it left, speaking with difficulty and not being able to raise her voice, but she spoke with conviction. A woman of strong opinions, she debated enthusiastically and backed up her contentions with facts. Her favorite magazine (and a long-standing birthday gift from Kathy) was Scientific American, and she often connected what she read there with the political climate of the day.
I started watching American Idol because of Faith. I was startled to find out she watched religiously, and then discovered it was a bonding experience with her daughter. They called each other during the commercial breaks to discuss the performers (this was back when the show was more about the kids singing than it was making them media darlings). I started watching to find out what she was talking about and got hooked. So that’s why this show is so popular, I thought. It’s not watching the show, it the conversations afterwards. We watched James Durbin, a young man with Asperger’s and a hard rock edge progress and Faith talked about how her daughter’s at-risk students were following his progress and how inspired they were by him, as she misted up briefly. But the year Adam Lambert was cheated out of the title put an end to her watching. Just like that, Idol was dead to her.
My husband passed away a year after we moved to Oakland, and Faith was comforting in her gruff way. Adrift after the first couple of weeks, and having no family to turn to, Faith’s stability provided a sense of security, seeing her at her seat as I walked up the street and tied the dogs to their post outside the door. That December, when I threw myself a birthday party, she paid me the supreme compliment of attending. Knowing that she rarely left her house and only attended the most important occasions for her nieces, I knew the honor she paid me and am still deeply touched. I started thinking of her as Mama Faith, but only to myself. She was certainly there for me in ways my own mother never was.
Later, when my life careened out of control, Faith provided a defining moment. I’d been complaining again about something and she had enough. She slammed her coffee mug down on the table with enough force to stop all conversation across the coffee shop. She couldn’t scream, but it was clear she was screaming on the inside. “I refuse to listen to this crap anymore,” she said forcefully. “You are creating all this drama and then come in here bitching about it. Stop it! Just stop it! You have to start taking care of yourself.”
The coffee shop had gone silent, except for Dizzy Gillespie wailing softly in the background as she stomped out. I was stunned and hurt, but later, as I thought about what she said, I realized she was right. I was creating a lot of unnecessary drama in my life. And no one else cared enough about me and had the balls to point this out. I realized that the drama was a residual effect of my husband’s death and living in crisis was comforting in a weird, albeit unhealthy way, and I embarked on a long-term effort to take better care of myself and cut the drama out of my life, which has led me to the contented life I lead today.
When I moved back to Alameda, I told her how she was instrumental in my getting my life together, and how much this means to me because I wanted her to be proud of me. She, of course, batted away the compliments like they were annoying flies. She was, and was not, an easy woman to love.
Fiercely independent, she refused all the help I offered her over the years. Her gruff exterior, cynical understanding of human nature, abhorrence of all things computer, her vocal opinions and stubbornness all fed the conversations those mornings at Nate’s. These traits were off-putting at first, and sometimes hard to get past, but gradually I found her warm, fuzzy secret heart, fueled by her passion for knowledge, her delight in children. Her eyes lit up with love when talking about her three nieces, or young neighbor who had taken quite a shine to her, or watching a young one careening around the coffee shop with parents in tow. That, and her caring for me, made her easy to love.
So here’s some advice from Mama Faith to take us into our futures, those of us left behind. Subscribe to Scientific American and read it. Back up whatever you say with facts. Don’t get your facts of the internet where people can say whatever they want and often lie. Get everything, and I mean everything, in writing when entering an agreement with a friend that involves money or a place to live. Never give up. Take care of yourself. And never, ever stop learning.
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