A woman with two young children, one in a sling, one holding her hand, pushes an empty pushchair slowly across the crossing. They pass the bored young man waiting at the bus shelter, who has finished his soft drink and carefully put the empty bottle in the recycling, and finished entertaining himself by talking on his cellphone. Suddenly his bus arrives and he is no longer there. The bus shelter is empty.
A family of three passes, a woman and her two daughters, maybe seven and four, walking alone together in single file.
A man in a big sun hat slowly tends and waters the plants at the nursery across the way. People stop and talk to him about the plants.
People sit in their cars in the traffic, scouting out parking spaces at the grocery store. A dog cowers alone outside the meat market or deli, waiting for his owner to come back out. A man reading a book, perhaps a novel, stares into space looking up toward the sky, caught in his own thoughts or processing something he has read, or maybe a combination of the two.
Someone else is reading a textbook, twiddling a pink highlighter in his hand. Now he is on his cellphone, distracted, seeking distraction.
I email someone I first met here once before about other memories of this place:
"Trying to people watch for an hour as part of the parenting program for my son (did I tell you he is out in the Arizona wilderness for several weeks after struggling with computer addiction, truancy and depression)? I remember our first (maybe only) date here at the cafe in Hopkins, a couple of years ago, when I wanted to fall in love with you and you weren't really interested. And the year before I met an older guy here who wanted to fall in love with me, and fly me with my bike in his private plane to go for a weekend ride, but he reminded me too much of my father.
Difficult to people-watch when bombarded with so many memories.
Wow, I had another date here, maybe third or so, with an alcoholic writer/dj who was too stubborn to let someone else publish the four novels he had supposedly written, and so they were lost when his old computer crashed. I still see him sometimes on the bus.
Hey, he dj's an 80's night every thursday - want to go? It would be a fitting conclusion to my meandering thoughts."
Another young man waits at the bus stop now, less composed, his things in disarray all around, and a soda bottle on the bench seat beside him, so only one of the two young women that join him can sit down. She puts her pack on the empty seat beside his soda bottle, and then another young man joins them and they clear him a space, starting a conversation together. The young woman on the end of the bench is not exactly with the others. She sits forward and close, knees together, balancing a plant pot in her lap, playing on her cellphone and occasionally turning her head to follow their conversation.
The man who was staring into space leafs through his book. Definitely not fiction. A whole lot of art pictures are on the first few pages.
Two different dogs now wait outside the deli, both facing the door where their owners entered. A little impatient, but not despondent.
The stuff in front of the young man at the bus stop turns out to be not only his own, he was watching it and saving a seat for his friends, who now grab their packs as the bus inches forward in the traffic.
A young kid tries to enter his car, testing all the doors to see if one is unlocked, then banging on the windows of the empty car. Perhaps he got tired of grocery shopping with his mom. He experiments with pulling two door latches at once. Nothing works. I look at the bus for a moment, and the kid is gone.
Children sit in the car in the traffic, their mom driving. Each alone clutches a juice bottle or senses it with his mouth, neatly strapped in his seat, looking forward into space. The mom looks forward into space also. Nobody talks or looks out.
In another car a child plays with an empty wrapper, pretending it is a hat, and his dad reaches back trying to take it away from him. At least they were communicating.
Every few minutes somebody touches a car the wrong way and its alarm goes off.
I think that once my ex and I met here too, for a divorce discussion meeting. Not particularly productive.
I like that about 50% of the people at this cafe are engaged in conversation with each other, only 25% on laptops, and the rest reading.
Inside the cafe where I went to use the restroom two men sitting at separate tables are talking. I applaud them and almost wish I could join in. Why is it so hard to meet people at cafes these days? It was easier outside of Wholefoods, where I used to sit at a large table under a sunshade, and that necessitated interaction such as asking if I could join the people there already, and new people asking me. Sometimes this led to real conversations and exchanges of contact information, which I never followed through with, but did remember the people to greet them next time we met in the same place.
A woman carries two heavy bags of groceries, two little girls walking alongside, and I wonder why she doesn't ask them for help. Then she sets the bags down and they each grab one hand. I wonder if they are helping her carry, or if she is now carrying them too, safely back to their car, along this busy street. If I were in her place I would have them hold the other handle of each bag and share the weight.
A woman pushes three girls old enough to walk on a tandem trolley loaded with groceries. She is young and happy, and the girls scream with joy and excitement for the ride.
A couple unlocks their bikes and distributes groceries, the man ending up with a heavy bag in one hand, signaling the traffic with it that he is about to pull out, riding single-handed.
I suddenly think of my son on the trail and check my email for urgent news of his visit with his shadow today. An hour has passed since I first sat down.
