Something Brewing

7/28/2019 Something Brewing

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/something-brewing 1/8

1

Something Brewing by Mariana Garces

“This hole punch is worth more than your life,” Lily says this to Seth when she places it into his palm. She chuckles but she’s dead serious. Lily has to rush off

somewhere and puts her trust in Seth to wield the hole punch with respect.

I rush into the room a little past 4:30 onthis sunny Thursday afternoon. Seth and Molly

are greeting everyone that enters with big grinswhether they’re new or a regular. Molly has

Coldplay playing quietly on her laptop and Sethis leaning against a foldout table near the

entrance.

“Have you ever been to Coffee Hour?”Seth won’t ever forget to ask the new visitors.

If someone is new, they’ll get a punch

card from Seth that they can eventually redeemfor the coveted Coffee Hour travel mug after ten

punches. This punch card is important to theseveral e-board members who mingle about the

room. It’s their job to start conversations andintroduce people.

Molly and I don’t talk long, but she

mentions she’s glad she came today becauseshe’s been in a crummy mood. With her curly

blonde hair, bright green eyes and face full of freckles she never looks like she’s in a bad

mood.

I beeline to the coffee, which I’m glad is strong today, because someone forgotthe creamer. I try to engage some unfamiliar faces over the lack of creamer.

“Looks like we’re gonna have to learn to take it black, boys. Let’s start talking post-modern French films!”

When the joke falls flat, with the boys nervously eyeing their shoelaces, I quickly

see myself out of their circle.

As soon as I turn around with my coffee in-hand, eager to find a friend amidst the

buzz that now fills the room, Drew is right in front of me, grinning like a madman.Drew is about 6’3”, lanky from afar but muscular up close. He’s got short, spiky

brown hair and these hipster glasses. He’s picking at a scab on his elbow from runninginto a tree when he was playing ultimate Frisbee earlier in the day.



2

“Long time no see!”Drew wasn’t here last week, but we had met and hit it off two weeks ago when

Coffee Hour was a much smaller crowd. He opens his arms wide, mimicking mine, and Igo in for a hug. My head barely comes up to his armpit.

“Are we hugging?” He asks this over my shoulder. He’s almost too tall tocomfortably hug.“I thought you wanted to hug!” Things are awkward but not for long. We laugh it

off.

He’s holding his dinner and bribes me with the promise of a chicken tender to joinhim at one of the tables in the middle of the room. It’s further from the hub of the coffee

and closer to the territory of people actually using this small library for studying.We sit next to a kid with his calculus textbook open but who is very obviously

listening to our conversation. Our table still has some privacy, separated from the rest of the room by a blackboard on wheels. The blackboard is filled with questions and prompts

to inspire conversations. Today it urges “This week tell a story about your favoritetraveling moment or favorite concert!”

Photography by Brennin Cummings.

Drew and I choose to catch up over chicken tenders instead. I barely know him

and now we’re sharing barbeque sauce. He lets me double dip.I say, “This relationship is moving so fast.”

He smiles as he says, “We can slow down if you want to.”



3

We’re having a discussion about the different Latin mottos of various universities.Drew thinks Cornell’s is dumb, compared to the other mottos hanging on the flags in The

Ivy Room, the dining hall he just came from. He lists them all off in perfect Latin.“…But Cornell is just “ I would found an institution where any person can find

instruction in any study.”

“That’s not very poetic. It’s not even in Latin?”“No.”The kid with the math textbook laughs with us.

After he finishes eating, Drew ushers me back over to where the conversations are

happening.

Dave Ge is sitting across from me after telling me the story of his freshman year

and how he came to create Coffee Hour. Dave is a psychology major who graduated lastyear and is now in an accelerated masters program in health administration. We’ve been

talking for at least a half an hour by now at our small table in the Collegetown Bagels indowntown Ithaca. He’s easy to talk to, like an old friend.

The way he talks about how much he loves his friends and his goals of helpingothers in life is enough to show how selfless and humble he is within just minutes of

meeting him. I can tell there’s more to him because people like Dave don’t just spring upout of nowhere and start changing lives without some kind of history.

“Oh, there’s another story behind that.” He pauses, smiling.

He is always smiling a big, open kind of smile, and chuckling to himself. It’s thekind of easy chuckle that makes you feel like you’re in on the joke. When he pauses for a

moment now, he’s searching more through his own thoughts for how much he shouldshare, rather than waiting for me.

The story, in fact, starts before he was even born.

Living alone and scared to death.

When his mother came to America from China in the 1980s she didn’t know

English at all. She was studying for her masters in engineering at Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, New Jersey. It was a new territory and she didn’t know anyone

until her husband came over too, to find work in Manchester, Connecticut a few monthslater.

They had to leave their firstborn son back home with their parents, at least untilthey could find better jobs. It would be there first and last child in China, because of the

single child law. They were happy it was a boy.Starting a family in America was the dream, and this was before the young couple

had even found a house stateside.



4

One Saturday she got on a Greyhound bus to visit her husband in Connecticut,where he worked at a Chinese restaurant. The whole ride there she was too anxious

thinking about seeing him. She didn’t even think how she would find her way around in acity she had never been to.

Stepping off the bus in Connecticut, she has no idea how to even get to Main

Street in town. Wandering the streets, aimless and now worried, she stops on a streetcorner. Helpless. Lost. In Connecticut.She’s wringing her hands and trying to remember the directions he had given her

over the phone the night before. An older woman driving by sees. The car slows to a stopon the curb and a smiling face peeks through the window.

“Can I give you a lift? You look a bit lost.”She doesn’t respond but her face lights up at the prospect of someone helping her

in a strange city.“Hop on in if you want! I can drop you off somewhere if that’s what you need.”

Without much else to fear besides getting even more lost, she takes up the kindstranger’s offer. The woman waves her over into the passenger seat.

She wonders Is everyone in Connecticut this kind? and decides to trust the womanwith the car. She hands over the crumpled piece of paper with the restaurant’s address on

it, that she’s been folding and unfolding for the last hour. The paper is soft and the ink of the address is blurred but is still familiar to the local woman.

She smiles when she suddenly understands this young Chinese woman even more.How terrifying it is not only living in America without speaking English, but also to do

even the small things in life - like find an unfamiliar address in an unfamiliar city.

“Oh, this isn’t too far!” The woman’s tone and smile comfort her even more.

When they arrive at the restaurant, her husband comes out from behind the back counter and rushes to hug her. It had been weeks since they last saw each other, between

her classes and his overtime shifts at the restaurant. Over her shoulder he sees the womanwho dropped her off, waving goodbye.

She’s rapidly explaining the situation to her husband. How she trusted the womancompletely. How the woman drove her there without even asking any questions. Not

caring that she didn’t speak a word of English. He rushes out to the car, apron flying behind him.

He shouts out to her before she has time to pull away from the curb.

“Miss! Miss! Please join us in my restaurant for a meal. It would be my honor!”“Oh, I don’t know, I wouldn’t want to impose.”

“Please! You have brought my wife to me and she tells me of your generosity.You must join us for dinner. You must.” He strives to use the best English he knows that

he has picked up from his work at the restaurant. He’s eager to show this woman thatthey are the type of people who always return a kind favor.

He is proud to serve the woman and to show his wife how deft he has become athis new job. They sit down to a feast and fortunately the older woman carries the

conversation, asking about their lives, their family back in China, how they are adjusting.Answers are short. Shared words are few.



5

She finds out that they miss their son desperately and are trying to find a placetogether but that it’s a difficult time to find housing for a Chinese family in the area, on

his low wages. After the meal the woman digs a piece of paper out of her big leather handbag. On it she writes her name in big black letters and below that, her number,

handing it over to the young couple and insisting they call her if they ever need a friend

in the area.Later that night the woman returns to her modest, one level, 3-bedroom homewhere her husband is watching a Yankees game on the couch, and she tells the story of

the nice Chinese couple she met earlier. Do you think we could help them out in any way? It must be hard to start over just like that. They’re having trouble finding a place around

here and they don’t need much room, do you think there’s anyway we could let them stayhere? Just until they can get on their feet?

The spare bedroom in their home would later be where the couple was able to

keep their 4 year-old son from China, and even later where they would have their secondson, Dave. Dave, who would never forget the generosity and kindness of a woman who

started out as a stranger and later whom he would call “Grandma.”

On this particular Thursday, Lily, the acting president of the Coffee Hour club is

dressed professionally in a black blazer and pencil skirt, but also green Hunter rain bootsfor the changing weather. She’s what Cornell kids call a hotellie, a major in HotelAdministration. This is after changing her major from engineering despite the practical

advice of her friends. She’s also pre-med. And she’s a student assistant on West Campus.And she’s a TA. And she runs her own non-profit bakery. It says something that she took

time out of her busy schedule to stop by today. Because she’s taking over the club for Dave this semester, she makes sure to show her presence every few weeks.



6

Like Dave, Lily was inspired to help others by her mother, who is still recoveringfrom stomach cancer. It’s why she’s pre-med despite her dreams of having a cooking

show on TV. And it’s why she’s giving all the donations from her new venture, Flour Child Bakery, to St. Jude’s.

Fortunately, Lily met Dave her freshman year through a mutual friend, just when

he was working out the logistics of Coffee Hour. Right away she saw how Coffee Hour could act as a great way to make friends on the campus of a mere 14,000 undergrads.

“It’s really easy to feel overwhelmed. It takes a bit of transitioning to feelcomfortable at Cornell.”

Dave knew this feeling too. Where Lily found friendship through her sorority,Dave found the fraternity he was pledging his freshman year didn’t quite provide him

with the sense of community he wanted.

She expertly works the room, introducing herself and explaining the gist of Coffee Hour: free coffee and tea every Thursday afternoon, or as the club’s t-shirts define

it, “Where conversations flow and friendships brew.” Lily is a fast talker and friendly to a fault. The first time we met she asked if I

wanted to join the executive board to help run the club and by the time I left we huggedgoodbye like good friends.

The beginning of Coffee Hour, around 4:15, is when the most people fill theWillard Straight Hall browsing library, located on the fourth floor of the building. It’s

typical to see people float in from across the lobby clutching small brown bags of popcorn. The building itself, which sits squarely on Ho Plaza in the middle of Cornell’s

campus, is a labyrinth of staircases and miscellaneous rooms: Cornell Cinema, theCeramics Studio, the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs. This makes it the perfect

place for a start-up club looking to expand its diverse membership.

In the middle of the room a fold out table sits atop a square rug trimmed with a built-in border. The rest of the room is herringbone wood paneling.

Two freshman girls stand to the side of the table in the center, chatting. Each

week they wear matching shirts with their Greek letters on them, its something to do with pledging their sorority. They are friendly in conversation when in a bigger group but

otherwise keep to themselves.

The area is furnished carefully with a few dark red velour armchairs. Each nook along the walls is furnished with a few scattered armchairs, love seats and a wooden desk

or two. The walls are tall, coffered wooden panels and the ceiling has built in lightingfixtures that glow a warm yellow to keep away the dreary Ithaca sky.



7

On top of each high bookshelf that separates the side nooks, there are large modelships. These decorating touches give away how old the room really is. Other details

betray the authenticity of the room: The small mounted electric fans on the wall, the glasscase full of board games, the small ficus trees in wicker pots, still wrapped in Christmas

lights.

One member of the Coffee Hour e-board is showing another member how torestock the teas and sugars laid out on the table in the center of the room.

“Crash course: everything’s got to be easy for people to find.”

The two boys carefully arrange packets of Sweet and Low and decaf chai tea in

the wooden tea box. Although someone is still searching for the creamer today, usuallythere is an assortment of different flavors: hazelnut, crème brulee, French vanilla. The

table also holds a few random boxes of Pepperidge Farm cookies (that never last long), acup full of stirrers, a squeeze bottle of honey, a big tub of Swiss Miss, and the two metal

carafes at the end that hold the precious fuel for the whole operation.One is for hot water. One for the Gimme! coffee.

“It’s actually a pretty good turnout today!” Molly says to me with an earnestsmile. If 15 people show up to Coffee Hour it’s a good turnout. Most of what Molly says

sounds like it ends in an exclamation point. We decide to attribute the good turnout to the better weather.



8

There are a few different types of people who come to Coffee Hour. There are theregulars, one-timers, and the people who only stop in to get coffee and leave. One type is

the Loyal Club Member. Along with setting up the coffee, mingling, punching cards and

greeting newbies, they are the backbone of it all.

Today, Drew and I end up ambling into Walker, one of the co-presidents of

Coffee Hour. He is the perfect example of this kind of member. In fact, Walker was theone who introduced Drew and I.

There is a different kind of networking that happens here, without business cards

or name-dropping. Walker Diebolt is one of these networkers.

“Hey man, what’s your name? Is this your first time here? How’d you hear aboutCoffee Hour? Have you met Mike?” It is as simple as that and it is as profound as that.

His loyalty to Coffee Hour is obvious in the way he loves introducing people and is passionate about making new friends.

Walker is one of the friendliest people in charge of Coffee Hour. While he doesn’t

have Molly’s Taylor Swift-like charm or Seth’s pierced ears and baby face, he is the mostwilling out of the group to walk up to a stranger and make them into a friend, or at least

introduce them to another friend. Today he’s wearing a faded red Nautica t-shirt andcargo shorts with some hiking sneakers. We usually bond over a love for stand-up

comedy. Mitch Hedberg is one of Walker’s favorites so we always end up back at his jokes.

“He said ‘I’m gonna get really famous then I’m gonna die from an overdose’ andhe did just that! He got really famous and then he died of an overdose!” He laughs and

when he does I notice the freckles that splay across his nose.Drew nods knowingly. He’s also a Hedberg fan but he’s not laughing as loud.

Drew is a loyal member to another club on campus, a social club for sober students (aptly named SOBER). I found this out the first time I met him and scoffed

when I heard the name of the club.“Like, you’re straight edge?” My mind conjured images of punks from the 80s

and skateboarders I knew in high school.

“No, like I’m a recovering alcoholic.” He says it straightforwardly. Drew is anopen book. He smiles when he sees I can’t find a way to joke about this. And then we’re

back to talking Hedberg and Sean Connery and British sketch comedies. We stay talkinguntil six o’clock; failing to notice how quickly the time flies.

Today when Walker first saw me with Drew from across the room he smiled and

pointed to me.“You came again! I love you!”

Relationships develop quickly here. You wanna go where everybody knows your name.

Documents

Something Brewing