saturday morning ritual

Every Saturday morning we go to the bookstore, My Beloved and I. It’s a little ritual we have. We go to breakfast, have some eggs benedict or strawberry waffles or good ol’ bacon and eggs, then arrive at the bookstore right as the doors open because we are anal retentive and have dibs on this certain perfect table, you see. We must hurry hurry, quick like a bunny, to “get there before all the selfish people.” This is our long-standing joke, murmured regularly to a shared secret laugh.

And every Saturday morning, I schlep the sturdy leather bag MB gave me about ten years ago, the bag that people will always ask about with a gasp and a green gleam in their eyes because they can see that it’s basically the best thing ever and they realize with a sigh what their life has been missing lo! these many years and they bemoan how unfair it is that this unworthy girl should have a bag like this and they, well, don’t. Inside this singular bag, we keep our Saturday morning things: pens, pencils, Post-its, composition books, sketch pads, scraps of papers with scraps of thoughts scribbled across them. That bag, worn and scratched and coffee-splotched and all the more striking because of it, houses most of what we are these days, what’s inside our heads. It’s not on a computer; it’s not in a journal; it’s in that bag. Right now, as we stumble around in our starting-over life, these alien days, more than anywhere else, we are present and safe in that bag.

For a few months when we first started this ritual, we became embroiled in an unspoken yet nasty territory war with an aggressive older couple we called The Jews. We fretted with each other every Saturday wondering if perhaps this was a tad racist, calling them The Jews, but they are, in fact, Jews, if the yarmulke on his head is any indication. And although our collective marital conscience remains uneasy on this point, we cannot seem to stop referring to them as The Jews, whispering it low and quavery, waiting to be turned to pillars of salt. But I must be true to what we actually call them, although you may think less of me — if possible — for the admission.

The Jews are short. He is short and squat; she is short and lean. They both wear the same thing every Saturday. He: Jeans, brown sweater, white dress shirt. She: Jeans, black sweater, black clacky boots. They have the same cropped hairstyle, although his is grey and hers is a solid dyed black. Her jeans are faded in two small circles of lighter blue, one on each skinny butt cheek and her legs bow out like a wishbone. Those thighs, I tell you, have never touched. They make me angry. She clacks hither and yon on her wishbones, gathering every gossip magazine in the place, sits down on her faded circles, and devours all the latest about Angelina or Obama or Lindsay Lohan. When she’s done, she abandons the clutter of her table and leaves the store for quick shopping fix elsewhere. Thirty minutes later, she returns with a bag — Old Navy, The Gap, Nordstrom. Every Saturday.

Through the lively art of eavesdropping, I’ve learned that he is some kind of a judge. This seems about right. I do feel judged by him. Or maybe it’s the sheer force of my own judgment bouncing back to me, although I think it’s worth mentioning that I reject this notion outright in order to still feel good about myself. His weekly entrance into the bookstore is always lopsided as he drags in a loaded leather bag with seemingly every newspaper in the world bulging and erupting from its top. He leans, he tilts. The physics of it all seem almost impossible to me. One should not carry a bag that has such a deleterious effect on one’s posture is what I always think when I see him. Or if not that exactly, something similar like Oh, brother. Eh, potato potahto. But I always notice, smug and inwardly shriveled as I am, that his bag is completely unremarkable compared to mine and, yes, I have caught him staring at my bag. And my boobs, but that’s neither here nor there.

The war with The Jews began one unfortunate Saturday morning when we sat at the table on which they apparently have forever dibs. It’s a nice table, the only one that seats four, so you can spread out and luxuriate like a cat with all your Saturday morning things. The superior features of this table had not escaped my notice. It had also not escaped my notice that The Jews camped out at that table, hogging it for themselves week after week. So when we arrived this fateful day and the big table was empty, so roomy and beckoning, yes, we sat. We sat at the big table and we liked it. A lot. No. More than that. It was like a hit of crack. We were hooked in an instant and there was no looking back now, no siree.

How could we possibly know that an ill wind was blowing from one day’s innocent squat?

When The Jews arrived twenty minutes later, they stopped dead in their clacking and lopsided tracks, thoughts fairly bellowing in outraged waves across the room: What is this? Interlopers? At our table? Never! Oh, the betrayal! The hissy! The gyp of it all! Yeah, well, what of it? We felt their wrath, but we were numb with addiction. High on comfy spacious bliss. While they stood adrift and incredulous in a sea of two-seater tables, I simply bowed my head a little closer to my book, pressed my butt a little deeper in my seat.

After that — the day The Jews had to sit at a two-seater table — it was Game On.

The next Saturday, MB and I, jonesing for that table now, arrived even earlier. But, alas, The Jews did, too. So there we were, the four of us waiting for the doors to open, pointedly ignoring one another, pretending we weren’t antsy little kids jostling to see Santa first or jittery racehorses twitching in the starting gates. The air vibrated with immaturity; it shimmered with practiced blase. I have to say: I was appalled at my elders. No role models, those two. How could I possibly be the bigger person when it wasn’t being modeled for me, I ask you? And, anyway, wasn’t this the Sabbath?

Okay. Fine. Bring it, God’s Chosen People!

The doors opened. MB yanked my bag from my hands and morphed into Pac-Man. Left, right, left, razor sharp turns through the maze of shelves, into the cafe area. The Judge took a different route, but moved his legs even faster. He had to; MB towers over him. His legs are as long as The Judge is tall. The man was hell-bent, hell-bent I say, on reaching that table first. He seemed ravenous, the Tasmanian Devil. I lagged several feet back and watched the furious footwork, the dueling foolishness. For a split second, I admit, I questioned what I had become, what I had been reduced to, if this was all there is, but when I rounded that last row of shelves and saw my leather bag perched in triumph on the object of our desire — MB’s longer strides having vanquished our foe — I finally knew what mattered most:

The Table and Keeping It From Others.

For the next two months, this became our new Saturday morning ritual: a cozy breakfast together …. a pleasant drive to the bookstore ….. a casual loiter by the doors ….. an insane death match amongst grown adults over the big table in the cafe. Not a word was ever said. Not one. Ever. It was beyond words. Honestly, I marveled at our shared sense of vision, the commonality of our cause. I understood The Jews. I knew them. What they wanted, I wanted. What I wanted, they wanted. I mean, I’m not this in sync with my own family. I don’t even understand myself this well, for crying out loud. I’ve disagreed with people mid-prayer, for God’s sake. It was beautiful thing, really. Four strangers’ hearts beating in rhythm to a shared secret tune, devoted to a single mutual goal:

The Table and Keeping It From Others.

As the weeks went by, our battle plan became more involved. MB and I split up, covered the front door and the side door because they weren’t unlocked simultaneously, of course. One door always lagged every so slightly behind the other. But that didn’t matter. We had it covered. If we were pulling into the lot and The Jews were getting out of their car, it was pedal to the metal, baby. A screech of tire, a squeal of brakes. Go go go go go! I tell you, we were Special Ops. SEALS. Rangers. Something big and bad-ass and heroic, that’s for sure. Our motto was our mission: “First There.”

And, well, we were and we were and we were. For weeks, The Judge’s little feet of fury and MB’s seemingly nonchalant strides went toe to toe but the results were always the same: victory was ours.

One Saturday, though, lounging at the big table, gorged from weeks of consecutive victories, we saw something that gave us pause. A sight that caused us to rethink our ongoing mission, our newfound purpose in life. It was The Jews, dragging into the bookstore half an hour late; he, looking much more lopsided than usual; she, sounding much less clacky. They seem resigned, subdued. Was it possible the ongoing battle for the big table had broken The Jews’ spirits? Quietly, they set up at a nearby two-seater while we watched, shot one glance at each other, and knew we thought the same thing: We suck.

The triumph of selfishness lost a tiny bit of its glimmer. Who knew?

The next weekend, chastened, we arrived and saw something we hadn’t noticed before in our blood lust for the big table: in the far corner, a skinny rectangle of a table, empty and ignored. No, it wasn’t the perfect wide equality of the big table, but, still, it was just right somehow. Out of the way and private but with a view for people-watching. I mean, if a person was into that sort of thing. We looked at it, looked at each other, and knew the battle was over. MB plopped the leather bag on it and there we sat, setting up our Saturday morning things. When The Jews arrived, listless and ragged from their constant second place in this marathon of greed, we watched with secret glances as they stopped, saw the vacant big table, us at the skinny table, took it all in doubtfully, then moved in slow motion to claim what had been lost to them.

So that’s our ritual now. The cozy breakfast. The leather bag. The Saturday morning things. The skinny table for us. The big table for The Jews. This is our new detente. No words have ever been said between us.

The Judge still stares at my bag. And my boobs. But there’s only so much I can change.