Yesterday afternoon a group of us pulled off the first Unity Café at the Bahá’í Unity Center in Forest Park. This was not an easy feat, considering that the center consists of a rather small, square-like room, a teeny bathroom, and a storage closet. There is no kitchen, no counter space, not even a shelf for putting things one might want to use for kitchen-like activities above and beyond your cream and sugar. Stuffed into the storage closet there is a small refrigerator and a microwave. Just as we were getting the café scene underway, the operation of the microwave together with a plugged-in hot water urn blew a fuse for half the room.
Nevertheless, the mood was relaxed. Council was at the center for most of the day, presumably “helping” Martha (pictured above in the green shirt), who I can only hope was made happier by the company for the bulk of the time we left our kid with her. Martha was in charge of decorations and furniture, so she brought half her studio apartment into the small space, and hung some photos and art from her own collection to make the space homey. River brought a selection of stereo equipment that he was able to hook up up his iPod. The playlist included some remixed Fine Young Cannibals that was actually pretty jazzy and cool to listen to in the small space. (The woofer he put on the floor helped.)
There was a sweet little bistro table in the middle of the room with enough space for a candle and a couple of kids. Unfortunately it was also a spot for lots of random mugs and cups to collect and you couldn’t quite tell whose was whose. As Martha told me mid-way through our café experience, “I keep putting down my coffee, and then discover that it’s in someone else’s belly.” In response I told her that when in doubt about which cup is mine, I am more likely not to make myself guess, but rather to assume the worst, abandon ship, and find a new cup with a fresh batch of joe. The culture of our little café was much more “share and share alike” than that.
We very much wanted to have a number of college-age folks feel that they could attend this event. As it turned out, we were late in getting out invitations, to the point where we actually didn’t get them out to anyone. Verbal invites that were issued were partially successful, but to our detriment, it was mid-term exams this week. So a lot of folks just couldn’t get out of their classes for this mid-week, mid-afternoon thingie-do.
Which was fine, in a way, considering that my weirdo children were there. Not only did they rough-and-tumble on the floor right in the middle of sophisticated young adults trying to sip their coffees, but they also made crazy expressions, said strange things, distorted their bodies into impossible shapes (while seated or on the floor), ate like little monsters, hogged up all the room, and then, when we sent them outside, they proceeded to relay race from the very busy streetcorner to about 500 yards down the block, and then back again.
And they did all of this largely unsupervised, although many of us did make attempts to make sure the children were not killing themselves, or each other. As one parent friend of mine said to me recently, this is largely the task of parenting, and can easily summarize what one does all day. However, in the context of socializing with the outside world, the act of simply trying to spare the lives of one’s children can get you into some really embarrassing situations. Parenting is a task often better left unobserved by third parties. Such was the level of my stress at the café among people who either do not have children or whose children are old enough to be somewhere else living their own lives. (If there had been other children there, however, who knows how much worse the situation could have gotten.)
In any case, the setting was peaceful and serene for the most part, and while we didn’t do any of the spoken-word poetry, rap, or guitar-playing whatevers that we were hoping for a mini-performance, there is at least a glimmer that we could try again next month and actually get a little gig happening. And our little unity café could be the slickest little joint this side of Sumner Avenue.