Regulars

I was driving home from a trip recently when I stopped at a Panera in western New Jersey. After I gave my order, the cashier looked past me and said, “Hello, Sarah! I’ll be right with you.” I turned around and started talking to Sarah, as I always do whenever a person looks friendly and I have a good excuse. “She knows your name!” I said. Sarah smiled. “Oh, yes." She nodded toward a group at a corner table. "We come here every single morning for coffee and conversation. The oldest is 98, the youngest is 90, and many of us have known each other since we were very young. It’s what keeps us going, and enjoying life.” “I’ll take that to heart,” I said.

Humans need people who know our stories, who notice when we’re missing or distracted, who keep us engaged with the world. But friendships don’t magically maintain themselves: Someone has to text, call, organize, remember. It only takes one determined soul to keep a group bonded; that person may have been Sarah in this case, though I had the sense that the routine itself was an important part of the glue.

Anchoring friendship to a small pleasure probably helps sustain it year after year... coffee, a weekly walk or workout, pancakes on Tuesdays... something sensory and reliable that says Here we are again, still together, still enjoying this. And then one morning you look around a Panera and realize the routine has lasted for decades.

It all made me think about kids, as I always do. Sports teams, clubs, neighborhood adventures, camps, theater groups—all those ordinary opportunities to be physically together are also practice in building the relationships that may someday sustain them. When we give kids the freedom and opportunity to hang out with other kids on a Saturday afternoon, we could also be helping them find their very own Sarah at 90.

Coffee and camaraderie... a combination worth cultivating.

—Debra Ross, publisher

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