ON MAJOR MINOR CHARACTERS

Honoring the bit players from the days we'll never forget.

Here’s a story.

A few years ago, I was helping my friend Latonya at her stoop sale in Brooklyn. We folded old onesies, blankets, and baby carriers, lightly worn artifacts from a chapter in her family’s story that had passed. As we worked, we laughed and sang. Latonya and I are loud together. We yell, talk over the other, grab each other’s hands, lots of “you know what I’m saying?” Despite our ruckus, we always know what the other is saying. She is a major character in my life.

But that day, our stories collided when a major minor character from my past showed up at her sale. As he approached us, I took one look at his red beard, the tattoos poking out from under the sleeves of his plaid shirt, and I ducked under the table. Latonya tended to him and his very pregnant partner, while I pretended to sort bibs and socks, totally embarrassed. I knew she would assume from my idiotic behavior that he was a long lost ex, or someone I’d been with once. But he wasn’t, and I hadn’t.

He was the barista who made my coffee every morning when my son, Lou was first in treatment for cancer.

Later, Latonya held my hand and I told her everything.

How I’d discovered the cafe one morning while Lou napped, desperate for some strong coffee after being kept up all night by the beeps, the lights, the nurse’s popping in, “Everything okay in here, Mom?”

How, in the pediatric cancer ward, I didn’t have a name, I was just “Mom.” And how the café didn’t seem to have a name either, or maybe it was just too cool to have a sign, way more Brooklyn than the dull strip of the East Thirties by the hospital I was marooned on.

“This is a concept space,” the barista explained, but I was still confused. With my disheveled hair, black holes for eyes, and paper hospital bracelet, I probably confused him, too. But he only asked for my name, repeating it back to me, scribbling the letters onto the paper cup with a Sharpie:

Alexa.

It was the only time I’d hear my name all day.

Whatever its concept, the cafe was comforting to me, and I kept coming back. It was pretty pretentious yes, but familiar — Fleetwood Mac on heavy rotation, kombucha on tap, a rack of vintage clothing. The barista was a specific type, too. He was like the prickly sound guys I used to have to win over, night after night, in order to get a decent guitar level. Looking down at my coffee, my paper bracelet looked like the wristbands that granted entry into the music venues I once played, a far cry from the ninth floor of the children’s hospital, where I now harmonized to a-whim-bah-weh with Megan, the music therapist.

I never got the barista’s name, but I came to depend on him.

Every morning when he asked, “How can I help you?” I’d pause, grateful for the breath, for the second to ask myself the same question.

It was there, in the tender space between his asking and my answering, that I found myself more naked than I’d ever been.

Which is why I blushed, and hid that day at Latonya’s sale. Hiding under the table, a door opened to another world, and all the other major minor characters from that time came tumbling out too, as Latonya greeted her neighbors, the bit players in her family’s story.

Wiping down the strollers and car seats, I thought of Jean-Marie, the impossibly tan nurse manager who was always so exasperated when I ran out of bleach wipes. Maria, the mom next door, who carried crystals in her pockets. And Brian, the dad who said his absent wife “just couldn’t handle it.”

“She’s not a real mother,” Maria had said, over coffees in the hall. But wasn’t she? Maybe she was more real than all of us just for admitting that this was way too much to handle?

Photo by Albert S on Unsplash

Sometimes, it is too much, and I just can’t breathe.

Counting the cash, I helped Latonya pack up what didn’t sell, and I gently shut the door of memory.

I think we all carry around a motley cru of characters, accidental witnesses to the stories that feel more unbelievable as time goes on. Sometimes a song, even a certain slant of the sun, will open the door, and I fear that if I open my mouth they’ll all fall out, like my teeth in dreams.

Can we call upon these souls, like ancestors? Maria, Maria. Jean-Marie. Can they color the present as they’ve colored the past?

I still like to sit in cafes, drinking too much coffee before I have to go get my boys from school. I’m most comfortable when Fleetwood Mac’s on the playlist, when the barista has a tinge of attitude. Sitting alone with my thoughts, my major minor characters, a cup with my name scribbled down the side, I think of how every human has a supporting cast, and my heart is full.

Sometimes, when I look down at my latte, I’m moved by the heart floating in the milky foam. As I stir, the heart comes apart, only to come back together again.

I text Latonya: “You know what I’m saying?”

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A MEDITATION:

Think of the major minor characters in your stories. Bring them to mind. Thank them, wish the best for them. Wherever they are, whether they remember us or not, they were there, it happened to them, too.

May they know how much they meant to us.

xx Alexa

PS. Feel free to share a major minor character or two from your story in the comments. I’d love to meet your crew.