Prickly Pear Herbal Tea
The tea is a deep pink color that pales where the light shines on the condensation on the glass. I stir ice cubes around with my thin, dark straw and take a sip, and the desert blooms behind my teeth.
Welcome to Tucson. The mountains rise always in the background, like a painted screen placed carefully behind the city. My mother loves this desert, has always talked about the mountains.
Downtown little shops spill out onto the street. An elderly man sits his hat down on the sidewalk and strums his guitar, smiling at the milling people. Scarves wave gently in the breeze. Hand-drawn signs in colored chalk hide in the shade of store awnings, close to the walls. Bicycles sail past. One woman has slipped a wide-brimmed hat below her helmet, something that I had never seen.
The first café is closed. My husband and I walk hand-in-hand past shops and churches, a painting of a Hindu goddess peeking out at us from the ceiling of a store. Spanish and English and even a little German pass us by, spoken conversations between friends here, written advertisements there. I caught sight of a Pagan store and feel a little tug on my heartstrings.
"We'll have to come back," I say to Jack.
"We will," he says. The sunlight catches his dark hair as it falls across his forehead. I squeeze his hand. He squeezes back and smiles down at me.
The next café is narrow and filled with polished wood. We meet our friends and head out back towards a little garden of potted succulents and many metal tables. People young and old have laptops and books, scarves in their hair and bracelets on their ankles. Overhead, trees and little lanterns spread out between us and the blue desert sky. Shadow and sunlight fall together onto the soft, loose dirt underfoot.
We sit and talk. The conversation turns toward space, science, religion. A bee comes to visit my plate, buzzing under lettuce and over a tomato.
"Hey, little buddy," I say. I leave the bee alone. She leaves of her own accord, stopping by my avocado and the shoulder of my friend's bright shirt. Flies large and small alike come to take her place, but none stay as long as she. I can hear, faintly, music from the street. Voices fill the little garden as small green leaves fall down on us from the overarching trees. My friend's husband reaches over to pick such a leaf from her loose hair. He rests his hand briefly on her back before resuming his seat.
We talk of the 90s, of Mars and moon rocks, of Christianity in a changing country, of Paganism's great umbrella. Ice melts in my tea. I catch my husband's eye, and he reaches over for my hand. His fingers are cold at their tips from where he had set them on his glass, but warm at the palm.
My friends rise to leave, and we all shake hands. I check my phone after they set out and see that a close friend from Rhode Island has sent me a message. "I'm in a bookstore," she wrote. "This chai latte smells like you. I miss you."
I miss her, too. I see in my mind's eye the bosky Massachusetts bookstore where we used to go, smell the crisp November cold and remember the heat of a paper cup of coffee between my hands. "We'll be together again, one day," I text her back. "Have faith."
Have faith. It is a good day for faith, for the gods. With the chaos and disruption of our move I haven't said my morning prayers in some time. I remember them as I walk away with Jack, our shadows touching chalk and sidewalk. They set my heart at ease and lift my spirit, it seems, for the first time in so long.
The elderly musician is still there, strumming on his guitar. I remember the boomboxes of Berlin, winter with white and golden lights strung across the city. It feels as though I have turned back time and stepped into the summer, but this is my November. The breeze lifts my hair away from my cheek. I take my husband's hand again. Our shadows join.
We walk on.
