Cafe La Blanca (15/3)

We were heading to a famous cantina with bullet holes in the walls, to discover it was closed. Walking up Calle de Cinco de Mayo in Mexico City, we opted for a small, colorless café: Café La Blanca and her wood panels, orange metal chairs, covered with photos of diner food taken in the 1980s and old maps of the city, florescent lights and server’s clothes resembling nurse uniforms. We sit at the counter for a café Americano y té de negro. Our usual random flow of conversation begins, but is silently interrupted with the life of this place.

With his silver hair and black mustache contrasting, our server has the dramatic moves of a symphony conductor, with a distinguished mole on his upper left cheek. Dressed in his server’s attire of a white lab coat and black bow tie, he resembles both a doctor and musician. With little to do, the conductor sits at an empty table, elbow on table, chin in hand, and drifts into his world. What orchestras is he creating in his mind? What pieces of melancholy does he feel and pour into his work? What emotions does he draw upon in his every day that create these grand gestures?

A female sever, hair in a bun with a yellow uniform, approaches him contemplating and rubs him on the arm. He looks up and smiles. She speaks to him, reassuringly and contentedly, as he continues to smile.

Sitting at the counter, an old man is dressed in an old uniform, with a police cap with a metal icon on display. Quietly, he sips his drink: un café con leche. He stares nowhere else but at the edge of his cup. I see his eyes: the sad eyes of an old man who is lost. His friend, also a police officer, is dress in a more modern uniform. He is had lost all 10 front teeth, but is unafraid to show it, for his constant, high, and child-like laughter at, and with, everyone around him.

The conductor comes back to the counter to fill the older police man’s cup. The sad officer continues to look down at the edge of the counter, unresponsive to his friend’s chuckles, shouting cooks, or the child across the way who put such an excessive amount sugar into his drink that his face shrink and sank away in its bitter taste. The conductor, begins to pour la leche into his mug. In his dramatic gesture, he tilts the metal tin to pour, raises it high as it pours gracefully into his mug, then lowers it until the right amount was released.

The older police officer looked up, and smiled.

All the while, we smile.

The extraordinary in the ordinary. Do what you can to inspire people to smile. And smile at all attempts made to you.