A Walker Family Institution

Living in a Body

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A Walker Family Institution

Episode 34 -- Coffee Break, Part 2

Hal Walker

Oct 01, 2022

Hi. I’m Hal. Thanks for being here. This is part two of a four-part series called “Coffee Break.” If you missed it, click here to read part one - “The Muffin Man.” This week, I’ve turned the microphone over to my mom, my daughter and my three sisters. Click the play button above to hear their voices.

Janet (Bestie)

I was first introduced to ‘Coffee Break' in 1958 when I worked at Norcross Greeting Cards in New York City, In mid-morning, the coffee girl roamed the floor of the working artists with a cart full of coffee, tea and pastries. I waited with bated breath for her arrival at my stall. In 1960, I worked in the advertising department of Scott, Foresman book publishers in Chicago. Every morning at 10:00 am, everyone on the 6th floor walked down to the cafeteria and lined up for coffee and pastries. Years later, while substitute teaching around northeast Ohio, I carried a thermos of coffee with half-and-half into every school that I visited.

When my husband retired and we were home together in the mornings, right around 10:30, we'd always break from what we were doing - Harold from his book and me from my artwork -- and meet in the dining room for coffee and conversation. I would do anything to have one more coffee break with my dearly beloved husband.

Julie, Papa and Edmund (Julie’s husband)

Julia

If there is any one thing that's emblematic of what it means to be a Walker, it is the heyday of the Walker Family Coffee Break. Every morning, at around 10 am, my Dad would start saying, “Janet, is the coffee ready?” Then everyone would convene in the kitchen or in the backyard. There were days when we’d still be sitting there at noon!

The fascinating thing about the coffee break is that it was a little microcosm of who we all were in relation to the family. My Dad presided. He loved when the conversation would veer to social justice, theology or philosophy. As Papa grew older and deafer, there were certain themes that he would return to again and again. It was critically important to him that we, his children, fully understand that human beings depend on ritual and metaphor to make sense of everything. It got to the point where we could almost recite Dad's coffee break mini-sermons by heart.

It seemed to me that the four of us siblings also brought our full selves to Coffee Break. To quote our family friend Karyn, I am the “short and loud” Walker, so there were many times when I would get checked by my siblings for monopolizing the conversation. There was a period where Hal was advocating for silent coffee breaks, where we would gather and meditate without speaking. Somehow, thank God, those never materialized.

My mom was in charge of making it beautiful. On a perfect morning, she’d bake a fresh batch of rhubarb coffee cake, there’d be plenty of half-and-half in a pretty pitcher, the table would be spread with a colorful tablecloth, and everything would be served on the Norwegian plates. She’s a gardener, and on Summer mornings, I would look around the backyard and think, “This truly is one of the most gorgeous places on earth!”

You could look at Coffee Break as an unhealthy indulgence (caffeine, white flour, and sugar!!), and even after I went decaf, that janky, buzzy 11:30 am feeling, after an extra slice or pour, is very familiar. But Coffee Break prioritized being together, with no purpose other than community and meandering conversation — well, that, and rhubarb coffeecake.

Johanna

I don’t know when the coffee break tradition began, but I know it was all about the longing for connection. As a white, middle class, Protestant family growing up in a Midwestern town, we performed “Happy Family” for the rest of the world. Everyone loved the Walker Family. But we were mostly living in our own little bubbles of isolation and loneliness, doing our best to make sense of the world, trying to figure out why we didn’t feel as happy as we looked.

OK... I speak for myself. That’s what I was doing. But I bet I wasn’t the only one. We didn’t talk about feelings in our family. But I know we all had them. I mean, aren’t we all up against that existential loneliness -- reaching for one another as best we can and not quite finding each other?

Enter: Coffee Break.

I think it started during college. My siblings as I were starting to connect as young adults. We were just figuring out that we were actual people. We wanted each other. We longed to pierce the performance of "happy family" and actually be one, but we didn’t really know how to do it. We grew up dancing around intimacy, and not really having any.

Coffee Break was what we figured out. We brought our outstretched arms and reached across the coffee and the pastry and said “Hello! I’m here! Are you there? Where have you been all this time?! I WANT YOU!”

We clambered heart-first to the coffee break table longing to be heard, to be seen, to have a voice, to tell a story, to make someone laugh, to hear our parents finally say “You are enough.” Or we came to share thinking, ask a challenging question, poke the bubble, stir the pot, gossip. We came for the buzz of the coffee. We came for the connection.

Sometimes Dad would fall into a one-sided lecture. Sometimes Mom would get judgy and blaming. Sometimes Julie would just keep talking without pause. Sometimes Hal would slink away from the table and disappear. Sometimes KK would cry. Sometimes I would get belligerent and defensive and start a fight. Sometimes it was busy and fast-paced. (we were so happy to be together!) Sometimes we dropped into deep listening, where the weight of the air changed and we saw each other in a way we never had before.

Mostly we came to love, in the best way we knew how, jacked up on caffeine and sugar, we came to love.

Caroline

I have a very clear memory of walking by the “Teachers’ Lounge” at Longcoy Elementary School and seeing my 3rd grade teacher with a long Virginia Slims cigarette in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. As a teacher myself, I don’t think I’ve ever taken an actual coffee break in a Teachers’ Lounge. (I’m not sure any teacher has time to “lounge” but that’s for another Substack 😉 ). Instead, I start the day with a travel mug and I take a sip here and there until it’s cold. When I’m home in Kent, I get to select one of my Mom’s favorite coffee mugs and settle in for a good old fashioned Walker Family “Coffee Break.”

Coffee break has always been a time to soak up the family, the stories, the love, the disagreements, the jokes and the things-we-wouldn’t-dare-say-outside the family circle. Of course, coffee break wouldn’t be coffee break without a dash of tricky family dynamics (once the baby in the family, always the baby). I typically don’t want coffee break to be over. I just want to freeze the moment — desperate not to lose the connection or maybe desperate to build a closer one. “Coffee Break” is a core memory for me. From coffee break of my youth on family road trips to coffee break with my own kids drinking sugar with a splash of coffee out of Bestie’s tiny, beautiful Norwegian demitasse. Then, way too soon, we found ourselves having coffee breaks around Dad’s hospice bed — soaking up every ounce of him and each other as the “original six.” These days, it’s not always the whole family. It’s often just my sweet Mom and me sitting quietly on the couch enjoying just being close. And that’s pretty special, too.

Hallie

I don’t drink coffee and never have, but I love coffee break. When I think about coffee break, I'm hit with the sense memory of Bestie’s house -- the Bestie-house smell, the Bestie-house tile under my feet, the sound of the Bestie-house back door opening and closing and the Bestie-house toaster oven heating up a nice slice of cinnamon swirl bread from Great Harvest. And of course, there's the Bestie-House Bestie weeding in the garden, surprised and overjoyed by my arrival. I'll never forget the Bestie-house sense of relief -- knowing “I’m home.”

One of my very earliest memories is having coffee break at Bestie’s house. I was probably four years old when she first broke out the little blue and white china tea set— two oz. tea cups, a lidded bowl of sugar and a pitcher of cream. She would give me a teeny, tiny drop of decaf coffee in my cup, which I would then fill to the brim with cream and several spoonfuls of sugar. Then I'd join the adults with my “coffee” and pastry to listen to their philosophical discussion. I know… so only child of me.

As years went on, coffee break never really changed. 10:30am was coffee break as much as 6:30pm was supper at Bestie’s house. And let me tell you, coffee break on the Walker Family Vacations was like coffee break on steroids. Once a year, all the die hard coffee break members would gather for a week of coffee breaks together. Being the oldest cousin, I got to relive the teeny tiny drop of coffee in a tea cup every time a new cousin came of age. Charlie, then Lucas, then Anna and Hunter, then Leo… I think if you asked every one of them what their first memory of coffee break is, it would be that little blue and white china tea set.

In March of 2020 I found myself living in Besties house. I spent the first three months of the pandemic in the skylight room upstairs. Along with the rest of the world, these months were some of the hardest times of my life. I was only a few months away from graduating with a BFA in Musical Theatre and the entire theatre industry had evaporated. While I couldn’t see any of my friends, I was staying up until 4am every night with crippling anxiety scrolling the newly discovered TikTok. In retrospect, it was actually a very special time. I got to share a house with my amazing grandmother who loves so deeply and cared for my every need. Completely unsure of what was next, I was frazzled and lost. In this time of not knowing, I knew I could count on one thing -- walking down to the Bestie-House kitchen at 10:30 in the morning for coffee break -- every single day. For that, I am so grateful.

Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for reading and for listening. Thank you mom and Hallie and Julie, Johanna and KK! Let’s do it again sometime. Have a good Saturday, everybody. ❤️ Hal