Hate has no home here.  I poke the blue sign into the flower pots in front of the cafe.

“But it does visit from time to time,” Bob quips as he watches me.  It’s late.  He wants to go home, drink a beer, and try to see Comet Neowise.  It’s been so hazy and we’ve been so tired, he keeps missing it.  His dark humor, scattered amongst the petunias in a moment of impatience, is foreboding.

Two days later, we still haven’t seen the comet.  But hate visits.  I’m standing at the espresso bar in what feels like a crowded cafe, even at 50% occupancy, and I’m crying.  Tom Edmunds spoons a mouthful of the special, beef biryani, into his mouth and tries to decide whether or not to avert his eyes.  The croissants from table 3 set me off.

Objectively, the cafe is beautiful on this day.  The sun is shining, and the Hate has no home here sign just says it all.  Here we are, in lily-white Schoharie County, where Trump beat out Clinton 3 to 1, and I see amazing diversity among the guests.  The whole place vibrates with feelings of acceptance, welcome, and community spirit.  This is the America I want.

Except for what we experience behind the counter… 

Guests have been conscientious about wearing their masks when they cross the threshold of the cafe, but face coverings are not required while they are seated at their tables eating.  And we’re finding that once the masks have been removed, Covid-courtesy ends.  The man from table 3 forgets something in his car.  He darts through the cafe and out the door, unmasked.  His partner runs up to the espresso bar to ask for more sugar, also unmasked.  

“You need to wear your mask,” Saoirse reminds her.  

“Oh!  Yes!  Of course!  You’re so RIGHT!  I’m so sorry about that!”  She darts across the room to grab her mask.  

Another guest who discovers that the honor system eggs are sold out at the self-serve shed comes to find my mother.  She finds Mom to report it, unmasked.  Apparently she sees herself as being in the clear, because she had a mask on upon arrival, and no longer needs one because, um….because she did sit at a table at one point? She reports the egg situation no more than six inches from Mom’s face.  

And I am repeatedly pulled from my cook station to call folks out.  “Mask on!  Mask on please!   Please, you need a mask!  We love you, but you need a mask!” My worries are about the viral load in the room.  My worries are for my mom and dad and Bob.  My worries are for my immune-compromised customers who need some social interaction before the long winter and a potential second wave.  My worries are for my business, that I could get reported for failure to enforce.

We’re contending with summer crowds, seasonal guests relieved to be in the fresh country air, liberated from their lockdowns for a few days of endless summer, all of them expressing rapturous gratitude for what we’re providing:  farm fresh food, a culture of acceptance, ecological sustainability…..And, ironically, excellent adherence to Covid safety protocols.  All of our guests seem to agree that masking is a good thing right now.  But an unusually high percentage of them seem to feel that masking is a good thing for others —   Not  necessarily for themselves.  

And the masking is just the tip of the iceberg.  Whenever a guest vacates a table, we need to bus the dishes, then wash our hands for 20 seconds before getting a fresh bucket of hot soapy water.  The tables and the chairs need to be washed down, then dried, then sanitized.  But on Saturday, our guests are hot outside.  So they come inside for the air conditioning.  But once inside, they find they don’t like the fan, so they abandon their table and head back outside again….because, after all, it’s safer there.   So we’re stuck cleaning and sanitizing the first table they selected, then the second table they selected, all while trying to keep up with orders and traffic flow.  

And everyone’s so nice about it.  So sorry!  It’s just there was a draft!  Hope you don’t mind!  There was too much glare!  I had to move.  The other guests just weren’t properly social distancing in there. I didn’t feel safe.

And we juggle it with grace.  We laugh, we grab the scrub buckets, we wash and we wash and we wash and we accommodate, and we’re hospitable, because we’re in the hospitality business.  And, of course, we’re all friends here.  

But the croissants break me.  Kate and the girls are flying up front, trying to keep up with coffee and to-go orders, so Bob leaves the kitchen to deliver the omelets to table three.  He sets them down, and they inform him that they’d like to move to a patio table that has just vacated.  “Ok, let me wash it down for you,” he tells them.  He leaves to get the scrub bucket.  They don’t wait.  They dart across the cafe with their omelets, masks balled in their fists, to grab the patio table before anyone else can get it ahead of them.  Bob is unable to wash and sanitize it before they seize the territory.  Instead, he’s sent to retrieve the drinks they left behind at their old table.  When he brings them, she looks up at him.

“Actually, I didn’t order a croissant,” she explains.  “I ordered a grain-free blueberry muffin.”

Ever accommodating, he brings it back to the kitchen where I gape in horror.

She bit the tip off the croissant!!!

And that’s when I lose my shit.  

How can people be so keen on racial justice, so eager to create a culture of inclusivity, so concerned about masking for public health and then JUST SO ENTITLED!?

It takes four days to make a proper croissant.  I make a detrempe on Wednesday, laminate the dough with butter on Thursday, allow it to rest overnight and then roll them out on Friday, then come in before dawn to proof and bake them fresh on Saturday.  My regulars have worked with me for years to perfect this process, buying under-proofed, over-proofed, overly-damp, over-cooked, under-cooked, overly-dry croissants, paying full price, supporting and encouraging us and offering us feedback until we perfected them. These croissants are, just like our low infection rates, quite literally, a community labor and achievement.  

Because we have to make our pastries all by hand, and because the ingredients are costly, we only make a limited quantity each week.  The croissant that went out on table 3’s plate meant someone else wouldn’t get their special treat this week.

And she bit the tip off.

That’s when I begin to cry.  I cry because every unsafe maneuver every guest engages in is a threat to their health, to my family’s health, and to my business.  I cry because there has been a lack of leadership on this entire issue in this nation, and so the buck has been passed down to all us little folks to solve the problem.  I cry because we’ve worked so hard to create a safe space, and it feels beyond our control to keep it safe.  I cry because these very same people who I want to welcome, who rave about the food, who believe in all the things I believe, who I’d probably really enjoy meeting at a dinner party, are unable to see that everyone needs to walk the talk together.  Hate is definitely here for a visit.  It’s an easier emotion to battle the real one:  heartbreak.  I’m so disappointed in my fellow humans.

We finish cleaning up at 11pm, then return home and fall into bed.  Each time I stir in the night, I’m thankful for the pain and exhaustion in my limbs that distracts me from my despair.  On Sunday, we make the decision to end indoor dining for the foreseeable future.  We use all our earnings from Saturday to pay for pop-up tents for outdoor dining rain shelter, then daydream about how we’ll spend our winter months with no cafe to run.  We avoid the oppressive heat of the day by floating in the farm pond, then boxing chickens for processing, then swimming some more. 

It rains Sunday night, and on Monday the air lifts.  After a day canning green beans, we make plans with our neighbors, Anthony and Vivian, to meet down at Rossman Pond for cocktails.  We bring folding chairs and kayaks and keep our distance.  As the sun goes down, Caroline, another neighbor, paddles in off the water.  She remains in her boat and we push a tumbler of vodka at her.  There, spread out at the mouth of the pond, we talk about family, we talk about business, we talk about the big dreams.  And I notice that we’re all changing.  Big dreams used to be personal dreams:  for success, achievements, independent creations, the marks we’ll make on this world.  Now we’re talking about a dream for educational justice.  For racial justice.  For ecological stewardship.  We don’t know our personal futures anymore.  We just keep trying to understand the part we have to play to help the whole to heal.  And the sun disappears, and the stars come out.  And still we sit and talk.  And then Anthony gets up from his chair and moves closer to the water.

“The comet!” He exclaims.  “I can see it!  You can see it with your naked eye!”

And for the next half hour, that’s all we do.  We stare up at Neowise.  And I realize that we’re in the midst of a plague, which is a once-in-a-century event, watching a comet that won’t come around again for 6800 years.  And the significance of all this rarity, these strange times, which come with unprecedented opportunities, envelops and comforts me. This is a rare opportunity for a great turning.  So it’s going to be hard.  Really hard.  We have to take our beliefs and draw them out of idealistic conversation and turn them into reality.  That’s difficult for everyone.  And that means that anger may come to visit now and then, but that hate still may have no home here. And there is no option but to keep trying.   So this week, we’ll move more tables outside, we’ll put up rain shelters, and we’ll try again.  Al fresco dining with fresh pastries, anyone?