Traveler lifted his head from the bookshop floor when he heard the heavy wooden door open. He wagged his tail when Dee stepped inside. “Hey buddy!” she said when she saw him, then closed the door behind her. Traveler was the self-appointed bookshop greeter. He was in his usual spot at this time of day, stretched out beneath the large bay window in the front of the old two-story house where the latest books are displayed. The afternoon sun casts long book-shaped shadows across the hardwood floor, warming a section that Traveler claims as his own. Dee leaned down to pet her favorite golden retriever. “Been a good boy today, Traveler?” she asked. Her fingers disappeared in his thick cream-colored hair on the underside of his neck. He lifted his front paw and dropped it over her wrist as if to say, don’t stop scratching me. She smiled and after a minute of petting him, pulled her hand away, patted his head and stood up, then headed toward the kitchen located in the back of the shop. The aroma of fresh croissants permeated the whole first floor of the house and Dee knew one of them had her name on it.
When Katherine heard her dog’s tail wag from the tiny kitchen down the hall, she knew her friend, Dee, was there. She laid her whisk against the side of the deep glass mixing bowl, wiped the flour from her hands with the dish towel that was flung over her right shoulder and reached into the open cupboard for a coffee mug. All the mugs in the shop had a hint of coffee stain inside them that didn’t come out anymore, even in the dishwasher. Signs of a successful coffee shop, Katherine liked to say. She began making her friend’s latte, and when Dee stepped into the kitchen, Katherine was pouring steamed milk into her coffee mug. “Hello! Katherine said. “I knew it was you when I heard Traveler’s tail bang against the floor. Your croissant is warming, jam’s on the table.” “Thanks,” Dee replied, “There is nothing like the smell of hot bread when you come through the door to lure you in further”. Dee pulled a chair out from a small red bistro table and slid her worn leather backpack off her shoulders and plopped it onto the table. She turned toward the wooden countertop that held her coffee. The counter top was covered in signatures from customers who liked to sign their names on the wood then find their names each time they came back. Dee reached out and carefully took her coffee, holding the saucer underneath so it didn’t spill. Steam rose from the mug like tiny swirls of warmth inviting her to stay a while.
Katherine took out a specific bread plate from her shelf of plates for the croissant. She chose the white bread plate with small purple flowers on it. When the timer sounded from the warming oven, she took the heated croissant out, put it on the bread plate and handed it to her friend. Dee smiled recognizing the pattern. It was from the wedding china that belonged to Dee’s mother. When Diane, Dee as her father called her, and the name she became known by, lived at home, her mother would set the family’s table with this same china for every possible occasion. Once upon a time, Dee thought as she stood by her chair holding the bread plate. Once upon a time, my mom held this china in her hands, and served her guests with it.
After her parents passed away, Dee found herself in their home asking Brian what she should do with the china her mother loved so much. She and Brian were still in the military and she did not want to take these fragile dishes with her. She had seen how some of their household goods arrived to their new homes, when the packers delivered furniture with a deep scratch on a valued piece, or broken items inside packed boxes; so the thoughts of opening a box and seeing the dishes broken was not something she wanted to risk. Anyway, the days of serving food on china was almost a thing of the past. Life was more casual now with today’s barn tables and relaxed décor. The large dining room hutches with lighted displays had become a dated thing as well. Even Dee’s mother had resorted to storing her china in a cabinet over the stove. When Dee asked what she should do with these beloved dishes, Brian suggested she take it all to Katherine and ask her use them to serve her customers in the bookshop and cafe she was opening. Dee loved the idea so they carefully took out each dish and placed the set gently into a large plastic container, then secured the lid. They took the dishes to the Jeep, opened the back door and set the container down securely. Dee picked up her phone, called Katherine and said she and Brian were on their way over with a special treasure. Katherine was home and told her she was both curious and anxious to see this treasure. When they reached her house and pulled into her driveway, Katherine came outside smiling and wringing her hands together, anxious to see what mysterious item her friend had for her.
The two of them had scored some awesome finds in their years of yard sale shopping and thrift stores dives, so Katherine assumed Dee had discovered another gem with a great price and she couldn’t wait to see what it was. Their favorite treasure hunt was the day they drove past a home with an entire patio set at the edge of their yard with a piece of notebook paper taped to the table and the word FREE written on it in red marker. Katherine almost wrecked her van pulling off the road while slamming on the breaks. They jumped out of the van, inspected the dinette set, looked at each other as if to ask why on earth would someone get rid of this, then made quick work of loading the entire set into Katherine’s van, and high fived each other as they pulled away, giggling at their newly acquired treasure.
In the driveway, Dee opened the back door of the jeep and said to Brian, “Tell her. It was your idea.” Brian opened the top of the plastic container and pulled out one of the china pieces which Katherine recognized instantly. “When you open your shop, would you use these dishes to serve your pastries?” Katherine’s mouth dropped open and she clasped her hands in a big clap. “What a lovely idea,” she said. “I can use them to serve my customers and I’ll tell the story of my friend’s mother who once owned them. They’ll love it.” She reached over and hugged Dee tightly, realizing this was hard for her to separate from something so special. They carried the dishes to Katherine’s garage and placed them on a shelf. Before leaving, Dee stopped, looked at the container, then slowly put her hand to her mouth and kissed her fingers. She touched the bin of china and whispered, “I love you, mom”. When the day finally came for Katherine and Tom to open their bookshop and café, Katherine kept her promise to Dee. Whenever a customer commented on the pretty china, she told them the story of the her best friend’s mother who loved serving others on those dainty plates. Pretty soon, customers began donating their own parent’s china to the bookshop just to see them in use again. In no time, Katherine and Tom had amassed an impressive collection of china to use as serving pieces.
Dee smiled as she took the plate from Katherine’s with the warm croissant on it and set it on the table. “So, how is your day going?” Dee asked. Katherine was back at her mixing bowl stirring the biscotti mixture. “Good,” she replied. “I got a new book in the mail today. Looks like a new author, so I’ll be looking through it tonight to see if I should put in the front window display. Other than that, Walt came in and said to tell Brian hello.” Walt was a regular customer. A 76-year-old veteran with a commanding voice and a passion for Civil War novels. When Dee’s husband, Brian was at the shop and Walt was also there, they would sit at a table in the front room, near the History section, and talk about the Civil war and their shared admiration for the author Shelby Foote. “As Walt was leaving this morning,” Katherine added, “I overheard him talking to a young boy who was playing with Traveler. He asked the boy if he knew my dog’s name. You know how he loves to tell people how Traveler got his name! The boy said, “No sir, I don’t know his name.” Walt told him his name was Traveler. The boy’s young father said, “Traveler? After Robert E. Lee’s horse? That Traveler?” “The very same,” Walt said, then he asked if the boy’s dad was a Civil War fan, the father said he was. Walt introduced himself and said he hoped to meet him and his son here again soon.” Dee smiled at the story, “I be sure to tell Brian Walt said hello,” then she sat down and slid the chair up to the table.
Katherine continued stirring the dough in her bowl and sprinkling extra flour over it when it got too sticky to stir. “Trying a new biscotti recipe,” she said, “I took a picture of a recipe from a new Chef’s Table magazine in my doctor’s waiting room. We’ll see if it tastes as good as the picture looked.” Dee laughed, knowing Katherine’s creation would likely taste much better than the one in the magazine.
Katherine reached for her backpack to get her wallet so she could pay for her coffee and pastry. She tugged at the stubborn zipper a few times and after several tries, it finally gave way. “One of these days,” she said, “I’m getting a new backpack with a zipper that works.” “Oh no, you won’t!” Katherine responded purposefully as she poured the biscotti batter from the glass dish onto the sheet pan and smoothed it with her spatula. “You love that old pack. The stories you have written with that backpack beside you and the places it has been with you! You’ll never replace it as long as I breathe air!” She smiled and looked at Dee with one eyebrow raised. Dee stared down at her leather travel partner and considered what Katherine said. She was right. That bag had been so many things to her on her travels. When Brian was assigned to D.C., Dee got a job as a reporter for the Hill. While on assignment, her backpack had been a pillow when she fell asleep on the train heading into the city to catch a story, or a table for her to prop her laptop on when she found an empty spot on the capitol steps to quickly type up a story to get it in before the day’s copy deadline. The leather on the bag was much softer and worn now than when it was new. It showed signs of use and age, not unlike the hands that were trying to open the zipper. Hands that had taken oh so many notes from oh so many stories written through the years.
Dee took note of the deep scratch on the front pocket of her backpack and ran her thumb and forefinger across it. Instantly, she was back on that street, on that day, when she was sent to New York for a short work assignment. Like a frame frozen in a movie reel, she remembered. It was warm that morning. She and her student journalist were covering the opening of a new restaurant on West Street. While writing out the correct spelling of the restaurant owner’s name on her note pad, they heard an explosion that came from above them. They looked up to see the first tower explode in flames and large pieces of metal began dropping to the ground near where they stood. Someone from behind her pulled her out of the way when a piece of metal fell from the sky and landed on the curb near them. Her backpack slid off her shoulder when they pulled her back and it landed on the sidewalk. She yanked it up and ran for her life with everyone else. Everyone that is, except the police and the fire department. She remembers seeing them head straight into the dust cloud that she and so many others were running away from.
The sound of Katherine putting the large sheet pan into the oven brought Dee back to the bookshop and she rubbed the scratch once more. “I guess you’re right”, she said. She shook her head to shake away the images in her mind, “I shouldn’t get rid of this old thing. It has stories to tell. And now that I am retired from my last writing job at our local news agency, I can write those stories.” Just then a wry smile came to Dee’s face. She reached into a pocket of the backpack and her fingers found a tiny folded note. She pulled it out, unfolded it and held it up and turned in her seat to look at Katherine. “It’s a good bag. I mean after all, it is real leather”. By now Katherine was smiling because she knew what was coming. “And hey!” Dee said with eyebrows raised, “How long does real leather last?” She and Katherine laughed and said in unison, “It lasts a cow a lifetime!” Katherine shook her head and rolled her eyes remembering the day when Dee took Brian shopping for that expensive backpack she found that she wanted for her first assignment as a journalist. “I love that story,” Katherine said.
Brian stood beside Dee in Winston Salem’s finest leather goods store, looking at a beautiful camel colored leather backpack with a hefty price tag attached. Brian told her it was her decision to buy the backpack. He would support whatever she decided. When Dee listed all the reasons she shouldn’t buy it, she looked at Brian and asked what seemed to be a reasonable question until she said it out loud. “I should probably get that nice canvas one over there. It will be more practical. I mean, after all, how long does leather last anyway?” Brian tipped his head to one side and looked at her. “Well!” he said, “It lasts a cow a lifetime!” Dee spun around to look at Brian to see if he was joking when she saw the, you-didn’t-really-ask-that did-you, look on his face. When she realized what she asked, she started snickering. Snickering turned into laughter and then she and Brian started laughing together in the aisle of that fancy leather goods store, while the finely dressed sales personnel looked at them disapprovingly. Brian enjoyed making Dee laugh, and once she started laughing, he had the ability to keep the humorous comments coming until she laughed so hard, she had to beg him to stop so she could catch her breath. She loved that about him. The two of them laughed often.
When they left the leather shop, Dee was holding a fancy rope handled shopping bag with a soft, camel colored leather backpack inside, carefully wrapped in cloth. They were still snickering about the cow thing. When they got home, Dee took her new leather purchase out of the bag, the smell of fresh leather spread through the room. She walked into her office to get some scissors to cut the tags. While she was finding the scissors, Brian grabbed a piece of paper from a small note pad and wrote a little note, folded it tightly and slipped it inside one of the pockets in the backpack. It read, Lasts a cow a lifetime. Dee, still smiling, grabbed the backpack’s zipper tag firmly, and gave it one more tug. This time it released and her pack opened. She found her wallet and took out a few dollars and handed them to Katherine. Traveler wandered into the kitchen just then. He knew Dee would save the last bite of her croissant for him so now that she was seated with her legs crossed, Traveler laid down under the table and rested his chin across her foot so she wouldn’t forget he was there. “How is the new short story coming?“ Katherine asked. “Like most stories,” Dee replied, “moments of inspiration followed by long periods of time staring at the computer and wondering what to say next.”
Just then a couple of runners came into the café and ordered two Americanos and two biscotti after what they told Katherine was a very hilly 6-K run. Sweaty and still panting a little, they got their order and went out to the large front porch to sit at one of the patio tables under the ceiling fans and reward their workout with a homemade treat and fresh coffee. Dee sipped her latte and turned on her computer. She let the noise of the kitchen serve as background distraction while she opened the story she was working on. She wondered who the next character was that she would meet as she wrote. Writing does that. You never know who you will meet or what circumstance you will find yourself thinking about until you start writing. The story and the inspiration comes as your fingers move across the keyboard. Somehow writing opens closed files in your memory of people you’ve met, or people you saw somewhere, and you noticed something particular about them.
Sometimes while writing, you recall events that have been tucked away and you didn’t even know they were there, but writing allows you to open the file and tell the story that has been waiting to find its way to print. A great example is the one when Dee was writing about her mother and the way her mother styled her hair, when she recalled that lady in her mother’s hair salon who kept a cigarette dangling on her bottom lip that never seemed to fall off her lip while she colored her client’s hair. How that woman came to Dee’s mind all those years later was a mystery to her, but she smiled thinking of her and knew one day that lady would be featured in one of her stories. Writing surprises you. That’s why Dee loved it. She spent the next two hours typing away, then noticed the time. She took her phone from her backpack to call Brian to ask about dinner. She offered to stop and pick up something, and he agreed. She saved her work to her desktop folder, then closed her computer and began to pack up her things. Traveler, who was still under the table, noticed her movement and got up, gave a big stretch and then lifted his paw and plopped it on her lap. When Dee looked at him, he whisper-barked at her. She saw him looking at the leftover piece of her croissant so she picked it up and dutifully handed it over. He snapped it up joyfully, wagged his tail then left the room for his spot by the front door.
Katherine was finishing up her freshly baked biscotti by tying strips of ribbon around each one into a neat bow, then arranging them on a serving platter on the counter. She wiped her hands with her dish cloth after she placed the last one on the stack, then started washing up the baking dishes that had amassed from the day’s baking. “Heading out”, she said? “Yep,” Dee replied as she stood up from her chair and put her hands on her hips and leaned back to stretch from being in a seated position for over two hours. “Brian’s finished his workday, so I’m gonna keep dinner simple tonight and let someone else cook for us”. She slid her laptop in her backpack and zipped it without the zipper sticking this time, then slung it over her shoulder. She walked to the kitchen doorway, narrowly missing a hospital intern who came rushing in, looking down at his beeper to see if he had time for coffee, or had to rush back to the hospital. “Scuse me,” he said as he looked up at her, then quickly looked back at his pager.
Dee stepped from behind the counter and gave Katherine a hug goodbye. As she left the shop, she stopped to give Traveler one more pat. Once outside, she walked down the long set of steps to the street and got in her car. She turned left from the shop onto Hawthorne Road, stopped in the small restaurant where the locals gathered, and ordered two to-go plates. Back in the car and driving home, she passed the old running path that she and her friend, Cathy used to try to jog down when they caught the running bug that was all the rage that year.
It was around the 80’s and a man named Jim Fixx wrote a book on running and its popularity took off like madness. The large medical center, where Cathy worked was near the running path and almost all the hospital personnel who caught the running fever like Cathy and Dee had, went to the gym just down from the hospital after work. They could be seen either stretching before a run, or stretching after one. Fixx’s book, called simply, Running described the art of running in detail in his book and everyone seemed to have a copy of it, including Cathy and Dee. They read about the best running gear, and if a certain brand was mentioned in the book, everyone had to have it.
The shoe market didn’t miss a beat in this new running frenzy. Running shoe companies marketed their shoes as the most comfortable for long runs, or the best for those who had high arches, and consumers bought the right shoes as running became the new sport that everyone tried to master. Dee remembered reading in a runners magazine that the most popular ladies’ running shoe that year was a certain brand name, so she bought a pair and she and Cathy joined the joggers and runner’s community as the rookies they were, trying their best to look like they had been running for years. She laughed remembering the day she and Cathy ran behind some bushes and bent over, holding their stomachs and trying to catch their breath and not throw up after a short jog. They didn’t want to be seen by the passing cars, so they hid themselves until they could breathe again, then the two of them continued their jog as if it was effortless. Eventually they got the jogging rhythm down pat and they enjoyed many after work runs around the neighborhood. Such fun days, Dee thought.
She made a right turn and passed by their church, turned left, then right and pulled into their driveway. She picked up her backpack and their dinner order and walked slowly to her house. She loved walking up the old brick sidewalk. The front porch, the flower boxes and the porch swing were colorful and inviting. When Dee looked at her home, she knew she wasn’t just looking at a house. She was looking at much more. Her home meant no more traveling. Her home meant a permanent address. Now that they were retired, there would be no more moving to cities they would only live in for three years. No more feeling like a guest in someone else’s hometown. The endless three-year military moving cycle eventually took a toll on her. In the over twenty years of traveling around, the military life grew familiar but she grew tired of moving. She remembered one holiday season as her coworkers gathered with their families during Thanksgiving and Christmas that on that particular year, the fact that they were so far from home stung a little more than usual. She longed for the familiarity of her own family during the holidays. She knew they were gathering and eating, playing games, taking naps and being noisy, but Dee and Brian had to settle for a phone call.
This year, as Dee walked up their walkway, a sense of relief washed over her knowing all the moving was behind them. The flower boxes were theirs and they would be there longer than three years. Her house meant stability, and this couple who had served their county for over two decades needed some of that. Dee reached for the door handle, opened the front door and was immediately greeted by their two goldens, Duke and Raleigh, that came from the same litter as Traveler. The ‘boys’ wagged their tails wildly as they sniffed the bag with two meals inside. “Hi guys!” she said. Brian came in the room from the kitchen and took the bag of takeout food from her hands. He slipped her backpack off her shoulder, hung it on the coat rack by the door on the peg near the place where her old press badge hung. For some reason, she couldn’t put away yet. Brian kissed her and welcomed her home.
In a few short minutes, this small family was seated at their dinner table for their evening meal. They took each other’s hands and Brian thanked the Lord for all the ways He provided for them. He thanked God for their home and the ‘boys’ at their feet. He said thank you for their friends, for their food, for their church and for God’s unending grace. He asked God’s blessing on the meal they were about to eat. He closed his prayer thanking the Lord that while there seemed to be only two people at that table, there were indeed five. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit were always with them at their table, and he thanked the Lord for their presence in their home, then said Amen.
On that peaceful evening, like so many that would follow, Dee and Brian enjoyed simply being home. A place where they entertained friends and family, decorated for holidays, fed anyone who came by, bought anything any school-aged child was selling when they came to the door whether it was candy, popcorn or fruit. They hosted Sunday school class get togethers and the Lord filled their home with lots of laughter and noise, family and love. Occasionally, a guest would ask them about their travels and Brian would tell about his military career, then Dee would tell stories about the interesting people she got the opportunity to interview.
One spring afternoon as Dee was putting away groceries, her cell phone rang and she recognized the number and smiled. When she answered, the voice on the phone was that of her old boss, Sharon. She told Dee to dust her press badge and report to her desk on Monday morning to fill a part time opening at the news agency, covering the community events section of their online newsfeed. Her former boss always got straight to the point and Dee laughed when she heard her voice. Dee stopped putting the groceries away and leaned against the kitchen counter to spend a few minutes catching up with Sharon. Her boss continued telling Dee that she was the only person she would consider for this opening.
Just before the phone call was finished, Dee looked over at the coat rack by the front door. The press badge hung on hook beside the old worn backpack that looked like it still had a few more stories left in it… and she smiled.
Welcome to The Bookshop 