Predictable as a Sunrise and a Cup of Coffee

Grande White Chocolate Mocha with a shot of peppermint. Skim milk. No whip. On some occasions when I feel like a cup of coffee after noon, add decaf to my order. Predictably. I can walk into any Starbucks coffee shop and not even have to think about what I want to drink. I just order it with the thought that every ingredient is always going to be there; I don’t ever have to worry about getting something different, or risking a cup that I can’t stand because it isn’t sweet enough. Every time I drink this coffee, I open the lid, breathe in the sweet aroma, and watch the foam swirl; suddenly I am lost in a memory. Somehow one small cup of coffee rouses up one moment in my life with such clarity that I’m in that place once again. I take a sip of my coffee and I think back to one moment, a small coffee shop inside an airport bustling with people, only a few months ago that still today makes me wake up to the chalky sunrise, and take a step without any predictability.

We sat in a coffee shop at the Jacksonville airport, me with my signature drink and him with a regular mocha. Goodbye was coming soon. I cannot remember the age in which I learned to say goodbye, but I do remember my mother telling me to “wave goodbye” like it was a happy thing. Here I am this cute, baby blonde girl with tiny blue eyes that see the world as my playground, barely toddling along, squeezing my tiny fingers into my palm waving goodbye to my family as if it is just something to shrug off. They’d laugh and think it was so adorable. Next thing I knew, I’m sitting in an airport coffee shop, twenty-one years old saying goodbye to my Marine fiancé, now knowing the world wasn’t my playground, and not really knowing if I’d see his face again in a year. When I was that baby blonde, a minute or two seemed like an eternity away from someone, and now, a year might as well make or break my life. Sitting in that coffee shop I wasn’t that tiny toddler and this goodbye wasn’t adorable. It was huge and impending and left too much unpredictability hanging in the air.
Goodbye is one of the hardest words in the English language. It seems that no matter how many times you say it or in what situation, a bye is never good. I saw a picture that weekend of a couple standing in a train station, kissing. The engine behind them was steaming, ready to depart, and the couple themselves were standing under a clock. It was almost as if time itself was counting down each passing second until they had to go their separate way. I remember sitting there at the airport at a table perfect for two, our arms stretched across the surface and fingers entwined. I couldn’t watch him because I knew the tears would fall.
I let the wonderful fact that I was in an airport full of people keep myself from crying and watched everyone else around me. I saw families waiting with friends or loved ones who were departing; couples saying goodbye to their lovers; kids running around their moms and dads hugging Grandma and Granddad goodbye. I saw so many people embracing and thought to myself how a hug is the last feeling I will have of him before we turn away and say goodbye; something which would have to last me eight or nine months. Maybe a year. I watched the security line grow as more people prepared to leave and knew my time was growing in itself. I thought of the couple from the picture and realized the airport was my train station, the security line was my clock; both counting down until that one fated goodbye. I turned back to look at Wayne and upon seeing his face, knew it was time to go.

The way we had been sitting at the table, the gate exit was located right behind him and I had the chance to glimpse a few people welcoming those whom they were waiting for. It was beautiful to watch the lingering moments before someone arrived. I watched a girl in her young twenties; short brown hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and wearing an orange sundress suddenly break into a smile which spread across her entire face when he was still yards away in the hall. I saw them as lovers embrace with a passion of moments gone bye, and caress each other’s face. He pulled back from the hug, looked into her eyes, and kissed her. Kissed her as if he had waited his whole life to kiss her. To have gone through such an era of time alone and now here they were, in living flesh, in each others’ arms. I watched a myriad of tears fall down her face, but every single one was a capture of the new moments to come for them. I swear I heard a movie soundtrack score in the background, music rising to its climax as their lips touched. This young couple weren’t the only ones being reunited, but I had found part of myself in this girl, and I realized that though I was saying goodbye to my own love, this embrace they shared would be something I had to look forward too. A goodbye, though predictable from the time I met Wayne, was only bringing a chance at one more hello in our life.

He left me at the security gate that night as he always does. After one last embrace he turned and said goodbye. That’s all I’d have of him: the feel of his arms wrapped around my middle, the scent of his cologne on my collar, the small but immensely passionate kiss on my forehead.. For one chance or another that night I stood and watched him walk away. Watched him turn his back on me, walk through the crowd of people, pass the doorways, and out into the city. Watching someone walk away from you really gives the goodbye an opportunity to sink in. I felt a few tears escape my eyelids. But it also let me believe there would be another day when he walked towards me.
There was. Seven months later I stood at Ft. Stewart with a million different emotions in me, waiting for his bus to pull up after a very long and tedious deployment to Iraq. While he was gone it had felt as if we were living a year apart, but now we were in the same time and place again. I’d been on base for over three hours and finally the news came that his platoon was pulling through the gates. I felt like the little baby blond again. The world was my playground and I was waiting for my best friend to join me in a new adventure. As I anxiously tried to stay still waiting for him, I realized this was a moment in which I got to say hello. Not goodbye but hello. It was the same hello I had waited for since I had watched him walk away from me.
Seeing him get off the bus after seven months of eternity threw every goodbye out of my system. It gave me a reason to breathe again. It gave me a chance for another goodbye another day, but I knew I would embrace that. Each new sunrise brings goodbyes of some kind, but we cannot let life pass us just because of one goodbye. We cannot let time tick us into sadness but instead we should be thinking about what the goodbye is bringing. One more hello. One more chance to say I love you, one more chance to live a memory, one new embrace. One more chance to take a step forward and see what the world is bringing us.
Next time I find a seat in an airport coffee shop, I’ll swirl my white chocolate peppermint mocha, skim milk, no whip, and smile at the predictably of one more goodbye. Because one day, I won’t ever have to say goodbye again. Life can be predictable sometimes, but each chalky sunrise I wake up too, I know he’s back home waking up to that same morning.