Caffeinated Politics

In these fraught, jangly‑edged times, the smallest conversations can remind us we’re still part of one another’s story.

I write this column at a time of great angst in Madison following another police shooting (six blocks from where James and I live) and at a time when a series of hourly headlines from Washington alert us to the fragility of our democracy. There is much to consume our thoughts and cause justified distress. Which is why an unexpected conversation set me back in my chair at Colectivo Coffee on Williamson Street for its simplicity and uplift.

It started with a boy who looked about age ten, reading a book at a table where his mom was enjoying a caffeinated drink. Kids who read books catch my attention. Since James and I were seated near a door when the pair was leaving, I looked up and asked what team he was supporting with his bright yellow jersey.

It was the type of passing question that makes a young person feel seen, not invisible. He responded about soccer, and then his mom asked if we lived at the home where flags fly. The boy loves flags and knows every nation’s colors and designs. Another vexillologist in the neighborhood.

His mom said they had lived one block from us years ago and had recently moved back into our neighborhood. Back when the boy was very young, she remembered coming to our home at Halloween, how James and I made sure he left our front stoop with ample candy. I always make sure that a kid takes candy for the older ones left on the sidewalk as the younger one rings the doorbell.

It’s funny how memory works. You don’t know which moments will stick in someone else’s mind. You don’t know which tiny gesture becomes a thread they carry with them. But there it was: a mother remembering a night when her little boy felt welcomed.

And that’s the lesson I wish to leave this column with tonight. In a time when everything feels loud, brittle, and divided, connection often arrives quietly. It arrives in the form of a question about a soccer team, or a comment about a flag, or a recollection of Halloween candy. It arrives when we choose to speak, to ask, to listen, to linger for one more sentence.

These conversations remind us that we are not strangers passing through parallel lives. We are neighbors, woven together by shared sidewalks, shared seasons, shared memories we didn’t even know we’d made.

And sometimes, if we’re lucky, a boy in a yellow shirt will help us remember that.