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By Ieuan Dolby
I always wanted a Café of my own. As far back as I can remember having a café was my dream. A dream that came from no remembered occurrence or place, but one that built itself up into an obsession and dream of my future. As a child I always had my pretend Cafes and frequently sat friends and family down in the garden whilst I poured muddy water from an assortment of plastic or broken crockery into anything that resembled the shape of a cup. From broken cups to cut in half plastic bottles I spent my childhood years pretending, making believe that I was a café owner and pouring cups of fine coffee for my customers.
I left school early, despite my parents' wishes that I 'gain a good education' and found a job in a Coffee Shop downtown. At sixteen I was serving coffee to customers day in day out, everyday returning to the disappointment of my family who never tired of pointing out that I was ruining my life and putting the family to shame. Every payday I would faithfully place another few dollars in the little broken coffeepot under my bed. Every payday I would give my mother some money and put the rest away for my future, knowing that it would take many years to save enough but strong and determined in my dreams.
For ten years I worked in that Coffee shop. The Coffee shop that I hated from the first day that I ever set foot on the red and green tiled floor. It had all that I hated in a Café and totally went against the place that I had always had pictured in my dream. Plastic chairs, plastic cups, instant coffee and rude staff, the smell of detergent overriding the aromas and customers came and went without feeling and recognition from staff and each other. I suffered it all, working late or extra to add to the little that lay at the bottom of my little Coffeepot under my bed. And slowly the pot grew heavier and heavier and the space at the top grew less and the filling at the bottom rose up to the broken lid that hid my dreams. It grew so full that one day I could no longer put the little amount that I had saved inside and it felt wrong, it felt as if something was happening to my dream and I did not know what I should do, or which way I should turn next!
The day that I found that I could no longer fit any more money into my box was the day that I sat down and cried. I cried for my dreams and for my lost education, I cried for my parents who no longer told me to "get a real job", and I cried because everybody had given up hope for me. I was the child who worked in the cheap Café downtown and who would never do anything worthwhile in life. I was the misfit that had for so long dreamt of my future, blocking out all else in preference to my dreams, a one-track mind facing positively towards what I thought was my pre-determined future. However hard I pushed those coins and notes into the top of the cracked pot I felt as if I had failed my family, my friends and my dreams and that I could never turn around and say, "look I have done what I set out to do"! And no longer would my family turn to me and say, "we are proud of you".
I sat there and cried.
I sat, with my broken coffeepot between my legs, the lid rolling around despondently and with a pile of loose change at my side. I sat there and cried for my lost dreams.
"How much is there", my little brother said. I looked up startled, shocked out of my sadness and lost state by the little voice from the door. "How much", I said, "I don't know", I have never known how much was in that little broken coffeepot. I sat there wiping the tears from my eyes and looking at what was in front of me with wonder. In all those years that I had been filling it up I had never once thought to count it. Never once thought that the amount would be important, always assuming that when there was enough I would know. I sat there looking at my life around me and started then and there to empty that little broken and cracked piece of pottery of its inner self. I pulled and tugged every last scrap of paper and metal object from the inside of that pot till nothing was left inside, leaving around me a mountain of money that represented so many years of a dream that seemed all but lost.
That day I counted, well into the evening and until I could count no more. I counted every single penny over and over again until my fingers ached; my brain refused to function and my eyes would not stay open. I counted until there was no more to count.
I woke up in the morning, wide-eyed and different. I could feel it inside of me, the change I mean, but did not know from where it came or what caused it. Getting out of bed I saw all that had happened the night before in startling clarity as the piles of notes and coins greeted me from the floor where they lay. I looked and knew that it was time, it was time to climb the next rung of the ladder that was my dream.
I never went back to that Coffee shop again. Even in the future I could never walk past the place with ease and I never told the boss why I just left. He called the house a couple of times asking if I was sick or something, trying to find a reason for my sudden absence after ten years of constant and hard work without once missing a day! My mother answered those calls and commiserated with the owner, I am sure wanting to say that "yes, my child is sick", because that is how she saw me. Never once did my parents ask me why I had suddenly left my job and never once did they ask me what I was going to do now. They had given up hope.
The Bank Manager looked at me and nodded his head. "Just sign here and here", he said. And there I was out on the street after all those years of saving every penny that I could in my little coffeepot, and with a Bank Manager who had said "yes"!
Dreams are strange things, should one look at them. A dream consists of something that is unobtainable at the time that the dream is dreamt up. From since before I can even remember I had been serving coffee to my peers who would have rather been playing Cowboys and Indians or combing the hair of the latest Barbie Doll that 'mother' had bought them. Since childhood I had been dreaming about having my own café, dreaming for years and working towards that dream every second of every day. Yet, here I was with my new friend the Bank Manager and his approval to start my own business! The dream that was no longer a dream was now reality, sitting right there in front of me and all that I had to do was fulfill it in the days to come.
Turning that dream into reality and accepting it as my new way of life was hard. I spent the first few weeks doing nothing. Just walking around aimlessly with my parents' disapproval hanging over me every time I returned to the house. I walked around without a clue as to what to do or how to do it, yet knowing that now was the time to turn my dream into fact and knowing that it was only me that could do so.
I did it! It took me a while but I did it. I eventually took my life into my own hands and bought a little place beside the river, a little place that was mine and what was to become the little Café of my dreams. I bought it and for the next weeks worked long into the night, cleaning, repairing, changing, thinking and crying as I struggled to turn the mess around me into a livable reality. The place that I had bought was not the dream that dreams are made of; it was all that I could afford. Situated beside the river that was picturesque until one would take a deep breath and become nauseated by the smell. Nice until one got close enough and saw the prams, plastic bags and empty bottles decorating the banks and bottom of the river, and nice until one got close enough to see that it was not nice at all. But it was all that I could afford.
During those weeks I often disappeared into myself and from my family. Cried myself to sleep under the chipped Formica counter that I so despised. But in the morning I would unwind myself from the cramped position under the cheap counter and start again. Start, sanding the floors and filling holes in the walls, painting designs on the tiles in the bathroom and stripping weeds from the mess that was the garden. Slowly but surely from nothing the place grew into something and despite my tears that fell nightly, I could still see light at the end of the tunnel.
I did it all myself. Nobody during that time came to visit me. My parents never knew what I was doing and never asked. My mother never asked me about the money that she no longer received and I never told her. Nobody knew why I often never came home, why I sometimes smelled like a sawmill or why I always had paint glued to my hair. They never said a word, acted like I did not exist!
I built that place up with my own bare hands. Using my money sparingly and only when essential. I bought furniture from second hand shops and varnished and scraped them until they were presentable. I bought cups from markets and bargain sales of interesting shapes and designs and I bought lights and fittings from the electrician next door at discount prices - he felt sorry for me! And during those months I went from a hard working coffee seller to handy-person without even noticing. In those months I learnt how to carve wood, tile a bathroom, plaster walls, rewire a house and to grow roses. In those months I transformed my Café into my dream and myself into its owner.
As time went on and the Café grew I stopped crying and I worked harder. I worked till my hands were raw and my head ached. I worked till I could no longer stand up and would fall asleep where I was only to wake up before the sun came over the tops of the buildings and start again. I worked!
Serving coffee seemed years away. That plastic Café that I had spent my informative years slaving in seemed to have never existed as the day came when I could do no more. I had the chairs, the tables, the cups and saucers, the decorations and the menus. I even had the coffee, the sugar and the milk. It was all ready to go and I had to do it. I had to open up those doors' and shutters, take the padlock off the front gate and roll out the red carpet. I had to do it soon, I had to make the next move, climb the next rung of the ladder that was reaching towards my success. I had to do it soon, I could no longer pretend that a wall needed painting, a tile needing changing or a chair required a second coat of varnish. I had done all of that, over painted walls, extra coats of varnish where none were needed and replanted roses in the garden until they were back where they had started from. I had done all of that and now I must open up and let the customers in.
Sitting there behind my cheap Formica counter, I could see the river and the mess that was on the other-side. The buildings that were falling down, the garbage that lay untouched all around the oasis that was my Café. I sat in paradise, surrounded by Industry and failure and wandered to myself when the first customer would come. I sat looking out at the mess that existed and I wandered if any customer would ever come.
He came in looking surprised and even more so when I tripped over my own feet in my rush to greet him. He looked around with wide-open eyes before saying, "a coffee please". He never said anything, just sat there sipping his coffee slowly and looking out of the door at the river. I wished then that I could have closed the curtains and locked the door, shutting out the view and the smell and showing to him that nothing mattered except the immediate surroundings. But I could do nothing, I was too scared to ask him if everything was okay, too scared to get up and smile at him and too scared to even move when he got up and left. He left as abruptly as he had come, just got up and walked out of the door leaving behind him an empty cup and some change. He just left leaving me shaking behind my counter, not knowing what to do next.
He came back the next day. He came in at the same time and sat down at the same table and asked for a coffee. I wanted to hug him then and say "thank you", but instead I just fetched him his coffee and watched him from behind as he stared out of the door at the polluted river and the junkyard outside.
He came back the next day and the next. He came with his wife and children and they all drank my coffee. He came with friends and colleagues and then they came alone. Then they came with other friends and they brought their work mates and business peers and they came and kept on coming back, day after day after day. Everyday, from when I first opened the doors in the morning I would be rushed off my feet, unable to sit still behind my counter and this would continue until at last light I would shut those doors and sink to my knees in exhaustion.
He left a card one-day. Left a card on the table where he always left the change. In all that time he had never spoken to me, never said hello, never said goodbye. He just came in and asked for a coffee, leaving as quietly as he came only to return another day. The card said "thank you for building a paradise in hell". He left that card and I never saw him again. He left that card and he also left his friends and peers who never stopped coming and never stopped thanking me for my service and I in turn never forgot a face.
I paid my Bank Manager back. Gave him all that he had given me and I started to have extra money to play with. I started to give my mother some money again every month and I treated myself to some nice clothes and decorations for my café. My mother and father never asked me what I was doing, nor where the money came from and I never told them.
They came in one day. They came into my café with surprise in their eyes, not that they had seen me or anything but surprised that a paradise could exist in the middle of such disaster. And then they saw me, saw me serving customers and smiling and talking as I did so often these days. They saw me in a different light, one that shone and sparked the day through! They sat down and I brought them coffee without asking, just placed it in front of them and left to continue keeping the flow of coffee to others in need. They probably wandered how I could have managed all of this, they probably sat there sipping their coffees and thinking that I was only the worker, sat their thinking that their child was still "no good". But I saw them the next day and they knew, they had found out that I built the Café from my dreams and with my own bare hands. They knew everything that I had done and could not understand it, could not work out how their useless and uneducated child could do so much.
They came in often after that. They came in and had a coffee, and if I was not busy I would talk to them and if not they would sit and stare out at the mess beyond. They never really mentioned or talked about the past years, their dreams for me in ruins and hopes never high. We never really talked about the success that I had created around me and that I had achieved so much with so little.
The only words that they ever said to me where "We, knew you could do it, we are so proud of you". Those words were enough for me and I was happy.
My parents, through default have their dream now and are happy. They are happy with me and the life that they have now found! I have my dream, I live it everyday and I have my parents beside me to enjoy our dreams together. I look back on the long climb of my ladder to success and often wander how I ever managed it all. It was a long climb, with many rungs but I am here today with so much and so much more to look forwards to.
I have my reality in the little paradise in hell that I created and the little cracked and broken coffeepots sits on the shelf above, as a reminder of the many rungs on the ladder that I climbed to be where I am today!
By Ieuan Dolby
November 2002
Author and Web Master of http://www.seadolby.com
Born 1967 in Cambridge, England
I grew up in Scotland. I was a Marine Engineer in the Merchant Navy having left
home at nineteen to join my first ship. I have now spent fifteen years traveling
the world on Merchant Vessels, visiting many countries and experiencing many
Cultures and Peoples in my travels. Having often considered writing, I do so
now having initially set up a web site for my works, mainly about the sea and
ships and all those that sail on them, but with many a story or article for
any reader. Now living in Taiwan and Scotland with my wife, I will continue
to write in the years to come.
