Thursday, October 18, 2007

just like that

It was fall. 2004. In Minneapolis. I owned a coffee shop there. And that’s where I was. We were on a busy corner - 42nd and Cedar. Cedar is an exit from Hwy 62 and a main route to get to downtown or the University of Minnesota. Even in the middle of the night Cedar was still busy. But this was in the afternoon, about 4.

The shop would empty out about then. The neighborhood 9 to 5ers had come and gone with their afternoon pick-me-ups. The stay-at-home moms were making grocery lists or waking toddlers up from their afternoon naps. And in fall, in the Midwest, 4pm is sunset. The first hint of gray or orange light hits the pavement and by 6pm, it looks like 2am. Streetlights on and inky skies.

It was sometimes nice and sometimes uncomfortable to be alone in the store then. Leaning on the counter and watching the start of the evening commute I was just as likely to feel lucky as lonely. The important things in my life had been caught up in a windstorm that teased me with false endings and easy solutions. Sometimes it felt like 100 mile an hour winds and sometimes it felt eerily calm with the glowing green sky us Midwest kids know as signaling trouble.

I think I felt a little wistful. I remember I had my head on my hand and I was looking out the windows onto Cedar Avenue. If I had to venture a guess, I would go with lonely over lucky. I wasn’t looking forward to summer being over and the bare trees and leaf clogged sewers were impossible to ignore. It wasn’t that I loved that summer. It was just I didn’t want this tornado to stretch into another season. I didn’t want time to pass. My biggest wish was for a pause button just so I could take a breath. Or a thousand breaths. But there isn’t a pause button. No matter how hard you look.

Out the window there were flashing red lights. Police cars. No sirens, just lights. They had sped up to the intersection. Each driving on the wrong side of the road to beat the traffic to the stop light. One from the north, one from the south. They each hit the breaks and spun to block all traffic on Cedar from entering the intersection.

I lifted my head from my hand and watched. The intersection was quiet. No cars on 42nd. The police officers, the commuters, me. We just waited. For something. To happen.

A male deer, big, antlers, lost. Came running down 42nd. Fast and swift and graceful. And unharmed. It galloped through the quiet intersection and I knew that the busy intersection on Chicago and the ones on Portland and Park were all quiet too with silent police cars and flashing red lights. His path anticipated. He passage guaranteed. The fallen leaves being kicked up in his wake.