52 Cups of Coffee: Inspiring and insightful stories for navigating life’s uncertainties (2 page)

Pat Crawford

Bailey Scholars Room at Michigan State University

Small brewed coffee

Never be afraid to say hello.

My original intention was
to start this project in April but decided to wait until July to begin for a multitude of reasons. Finals week was fast-approaching; I was preparing for a six-week trip to Europe as a study abroad program assistant; and, after a full year of classes, lectures, assignments, papers, and exams, my brain was about as useful as a toaster in the middle of the ocean.

July seemed like the perfect
starting date, so I marked it on my calendar, put the idea on a cluttered shelf in my brain, and said bon voyage to America. After enjoying good food and fine wine during my abroad program in Paris, Barcelona, and Italy (and after a few weeks recovering), I felt refreshed and ready for this crazy adventure to start. Or so I thought. After writing the initial blog post, reality sunk in:
I actually have to email someone and plan a coffee date.

Of course, that thought had crossed my mind during the planning process, but there is a big gap between thinking about something and doing it. Like crossing a rickety old rope bridge strung across a canyon
: it was scary, but I had to take the first step. It was time to leave the solid ground of the thinking side—and head in the direction of doing.

Fortunately, a great opportunity presented itself that made the first step a little easier.
I was a member of the Bailey Scholars Program at Michigan State University working on a Specialization in Connected Learning. It’s a small program and very close community of students. The current program director was preparing to leave in the fall to pursue a Ph.D. The replacement director, Dr. Pat Crawford, had started coming into the office to learn the ropes for a seamless transition in leadership.

I had been hanging out in the office
(commonly referred to as the Baily space) when I met Pat for the first time. As I was frequently in the Bailey space, I knew over the course of the upcoming school year I would slowly get to know the new director, but it occurred to me that she would be the perfect start to my project. Why not invite her to coffee, get to know her sooner rather than later, and offer her a warm welcome to her new position?

That’s exactly what happened. A few days later, we met in the Bailey space, enjoyed a cup of coffee from the Bailey coffee maker (a frequent lifesaver for me), and got to know each other.

We talked about our backgrounds, the number of siblings we had, where we'd grown up, what we did for fun, our mutual love for dogs, and a host of other topics that moved us from strangers to acquaintances. Thanks to the meeting, the next time we would see each other in the space, we wouldn’t just exchange polite hellos. Instead, I could ask how her two labs were doing, or give her an update on one of my projects. I would also be a familiar face to answer one of the hundreds of questions she’d likely have as she got to know her way around the community in the upcoming months.

Change is never easy. When the current director finally
departed, he would leave big shoes to fill, and the atmosphere of the community would be decidedly different, but after having coffee with Pat, I wasn’t as nervous about the transition. I had made a new friend, and now had a better idea of what to expect from the new director.

I decided
my first Cup had been successful. I had taken the first major step of this project and enjoyed a pleasant conversation in the process.

I learned three lessons from Cup 1: get to know the pe
ople involved in the things you do; be a friendly face for those who are new in your community; and, most importantly, taking the first step is tough, but it’s worth it.

Rita Meyer

Starbucks in Cheyenne, Wyoming

Grande brewed coffee

Take life one
step at a time, building on small successes along the way.

Every
year, during the last full week in July, I head to Cheyenne Frontier Days in Cheyenne, Wyoming. The self-proclaimed “Daddy of ’em All” is a weeklong rodeo and destination point for my high-school friends to reconnect after a semester away at various colleges. Cheyenne is also where my grandmother and a few aunts and uncles live.

Shortly before leaving for Cheyenne, I enlisted my Aunt Peg to help me find someone to share a cup of coffee. She knew the perfect person: Rita Meyer, a former Colonel in the Wyoming Air National Guard, the current State Auditor and a gubernatorial candidate
, attempting to become the first elected female governor of Wyoming. The campaign trail had been keeping Rita busy, but Peg encouraged me to give her a call. As luck would have it, she had a little free time on Saturday. Her warmth radiated through the phone line, and I was looking forward to the meeting as soon as I hung up.

I arrived at Starbucks early on Saturday and made small talk with an old cowboy who had plenty of amusing rodeo stories to share
while I waited. When Rita walked in, she greeted me with a big smile, shook my hand and introduced herself. We ordered coffee, found a table out on the patio, and started talking. It didn’t take me long to ask the question that was foremost on my mind: Where had she gained the confidence to run for Governor?

Her answer was much simpler than I expected
. Rita said she took her life one step at a time, building on her successes along the way. She admitted very openly that ten years before, she hadn’t had the confidence to campaign. She needed a career full of large (and small) successes to give her both the experience and confidence that would lead her to the place she was now. But it hadn’t just been the successes that helped her. There were failures along the way that were beneficial, too. She smiled as she told me, “You have to fall down and scrape your knees—just hope you don’t break a femur!” Confidence is about learning from your mistakes and moving forward.

As you read those words on paper, it seems like obvious advice, and it is, but it is something I won
’t soon forget. It’s one thing to hear those words, but to meet someone who illustrates what happens when you heed the advice is something else. Rita’s biography lists one achievement or honor after another. It’s intimidating, and if Rita weren’t so warm and genuine, she would have been intimidating, too.

However,
she hadn’t always been so esteemed. This woman had two undergraduate degrees and an MBA in International Business; she had received numerous awards for excellence in leadership during her active duty in the Air National Guard, and had won the 2006 campaign for State Auditor. And yet she was once too shy to talk to people and too poor to take the entrance exams for college. Rita grew up in a small Wyoming town and had to work incredibly hard to become the person she was.

Her impressive resume
was not something she built overnight, though; it was a process and a journey. At one point, Rita told me that women need better role models, and I believed her. In less than an hour, she made me realize that who I was that day was vastly different from the person I would be in 30 years—but the change would be the result of small steps. Her advice was that if I worked hard, held onto personal integrity, surrounded myself with good people, and dug deep when things got hard, life would only get better. It was reassuring advice to hear.

Before I left Starbucks, Rita told me that one of two ou
tcomes would occur in her race for Governor: she would win, or she would lose. If she won, she had the opportunity to work hard for the people of Wyoming. If she lost, she would take the experiences from the campaign and move forward. She didn’t know if she’d win the race, but she did know that if she didn’t run, she could never win—it takes risk to get rewards.

The campaign trail was tough. Rita paraded, did meet-and-greets, drove long hours on the Wyoming roads, made speeches, answered tough questions, and continued to fulfill her duties as the
State Auditor of Wyoming. Among all her activity, she had taken an hour out of her Saturday to sit down with me over a cup of coffee and talk. I’m grateful that she did, and I came away with advice I’ll carry with me for a long time.

I guess
I could say I found a new role model.

August Crabtree

Park bench near the fishing lake in Gillette, Wyoming

Tall brewed coffee from Starbucks

Don
’t let assumptions stop you from great opportunities.

August Crabtree
, an unemployed, recovered alcoholic with chronic depression and anxiety, is not exactly someone a mother would recommend her daughter meet for coffee. And yet, that is exactly what happened.

August
is a well-known face at the Campbell County Public Library in Gillette, Wyoming, where he has been a loyal patron for many years. He has read an impressive number of books and had just recently started bringing in 4x6 inch prints of photos he’d taken around town to sell to the librarians for two dollars apiece. My mother is one of those librarians and had gotten to know August over the years. She told me he was a straightforward and friendly guy who isn’t shy about his difficult past.

August
doesn’t have a phone, so my mom had to wait until he came into the library to see if he would be interested in speaking with me. He was game, and told her to have me head to the Starbucks downtown, ask for a latte for August and then meet me at the city’s fishing-lake park near his beat-up red Toyota pickup. “They’ll know what she means,” he told her (I later found out it meant an extra-hot, extra-foam latte. I also found out he didn’t want to meet at a coffee shop because they won’t let him smoke).

As I trekked to
the park, I tried to keep my apprehension for the situation in check while circling the lake, looking for a truck that fit his description. My college roommate, Jennifer, who had joined me on my road trip out west, was with me. She was going to catch up on some reading while August and I talked.

As we got out of the car, he yelled in a scratchy and sligh
tly high-pitched voice, “Well you’re late! I’ve been waiting!” Then he let out a friendly laugh to show he was joking. His appearance—cutoff button shirt tucked into ripped jeans; hair pulled back into a small ponytail, and a mouthful of worn-out teeth—caught me off guard, but the nonthreatening laugh put me at ease. I introduced him to Jennifer and handed him the coffee. He asked if I’d brought sugar; I hadn’t, and I apologized, but he said not to worry, he’d figured I would forget, so he had brought his own.

He pulled two packets of white sugar out of his pocket and poured them into the cup. Then he searched for som
ething to stir his coffee. His best option was a half-burnt stick of incense from inside his truck; he used it to stir the coffee a few times and tossed it back into the truck. Satisfied with his concoction, he took a sip and let out a startling yelp. Worried he’d burnt himself, I asked if there was something wrong, but he enthusiastically replied, “Nope, it’s perfect!”

Before I could suggest finding a place to sit he
announced, “I have a skinny ass, and I can’t sit down long.” I pointed to a bench near the water.

“In that hot sun?
I got heat stroke in Arizona and now I can’t handle the sun. Let’s just sit down right here in the grass.” Then he reached into his old truck again, grabbed two seat cushions from the driver’s side, threw them in the grass, and took a seat. I had no choice but to follow suit.

I thought I would give him an introduction to myself, e
xplain why I wanted to have coffee, what the purpose of the project was, etc., but I never got a chance. He was telling me stories before I even had time to get situated. My mom had told him that I liked photography, so he handed me his Pentax camera with its long lens, and showed me how to go through the pictures. While I was doing that, he put another packet of sugar into his coffee, this time using the pencil in his front pocket to stir. I asked him a few basic questions, and before I knew it, his story started to unfold.

August, who
is 54, spent a lot of time at the library because he loves reading. The habit is the result of his chronic depression. It had started years ago during a time when he began to lose what he called his “zap.” It happened slowly, and his workdays started to dwindle until he only had the energy to work an hour a day. Besides sleep, his only activity at the time was reading—sometimes a book a day. He started in the nonfiction section before moving to science fiction, then later to books that explained the human condition—his condition. With the help of proper medication and time, his “zap” had returned for the most part, and the knowledge he had picked up from the countless books stayed with him.

He mentioned alcoholism
, so I asked about that. He said he had originally started drinking because it took the edge off his depression: “It stopped me from going crazy and blowing my brains out!” But what had been saving him was also killing him. Just when he would start making decent money and turning his life around, he would drink too much and usually end up back in jail. Things finally reached a breaking point that left no other option than Alcoholics Anonymous. After numerous setbacks, he finally sobered up and has remained sober for 25 years.

At this point in our meeting, August got up without sa
ying anything and walked to his truck for a big Folgers Coffee can. He sat back down, opened the can, and pulled out a cigarette butt. Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a popsicle stick with a small slit in it and a lighter. I wondered how someone without a job could afford cigarettes; he was about to answer my question. He took a cigarette butt from the can and wedged it into the slit in the popsicle stick, so he could light it and steal the remaining few puffs from the end. During the course of our conversation, he stopped three times to go through this methodical process. Then he jumped back into his story as if he had never stopped.

I asked him how he spent his free time
, since he didn’t have a job. August said he was trying to find a job—he’d been in construction his whole life and could build anything—and that he spent a lot of time “musing over things.” He frequently thought about methods to improve his health, and how he got sick in the first place. He said he now understood the nature of chronic depression, but that wasn’t what he attributed his troubles to. He said what made him depressed and prone to drinking in the first place was “not following his bliss.” The fear of judgment from his friends and family had stopped him from pursuing his true interests. That lack of passion in his life then created a hollowness that he used alcohol to fill.

* * *

Through all the difficulties of his life—depression, alcoholism, jail, unemployment—and his reading and musing, he came to realize that the path to happiness is following your passion. Passion is what feeds the soul, what fills the hollowness; following bliss is the secret to preventing destructive habits. That is the reason he shows up at the library with photographs; sharing his arts brings him joy.

When August
asked me what I was passionate about it caught me off guard. It’s a trickier question than it seems, and I couldn’t organize the dozens of thoughts floating around my head into a coherent sentence. “I’m not exactly sure,” I replied, “I’m still in the process of finding out!” He told me not to worry. “You’re young, which means you have the world by the balls. You’ll figure it out!” (Note: I left out August’s frequent use of the f-word; he clearly has an affinity for using it.)

His simple point resonated with me. In a year I
will be diving into the real-world job market, so, between now and then, I better come up with a stronger answer to that question than, “I’m not exactly sure…”

August continually surprised me with his complex and canny statements. The more it happened, the more I realized how I had underestimated him. I
would never have guessed he would be giving me detailed accounts of historical events, talking about the sustainability of civilization, or reflecting on the human condition. At one point, he explained the science behind how the mind works, and even drew me a diagram depicting how the subconscious and the body work together and communicate through dreams. He is a man with wisdom to share. Yes, the wisdom might be unconventional; nevertheless, I came away from the experience with a broader perspective of life, hardship, and a reminder that we were all fighting some battle and could benefit from a little compassion.

To be honest, I
wouldn’t have gone out of my way to talk with someone like August if my mom hadn’t suggested it. I’m glad she did. It helped me see that if I judge people based on an outward appearance, and if I only talk to people within my comfort zone, I will miss many valuable—and colorful—conversations.