“Not the coffee, nor the coffeehouse is the longing of the soul. A friend is what the soul longs for – coffee is just the excuse.”  ~Turkish adage

I met my best friend Heidi in a coffee house, and though I went there for coffee, I came away with so much more.

Life had other plans for me, though, and I left home to trot the globe, though that is not really what my soul wanted. My soul wanted home. My soul wanted my friend. My soul wanted things other than what was before me. I said “hush” to my soul and went away because my mind did not know what it wanted and needed to search for that elusive “it.” Sometimes the mind ignores the soul’s desires, and the silent soul has no choice but to follow the clamoring of the brain.

Although years of confusion and longing were the wake of life overseas, my mind was surprised that new friends threw some love into the hole in my cowering soul. Leaving those strange places was more difficult than my thinking self had ever imagined it would be. Funny, huh – that leaving a place I didn’t want to be brought pangs of sadness?

To say goodbye, one new friend took me for lunch, and following a dessert of mille feuilles, she insisted we linger over a cup of coffee. Again, it was about so much more than the coffee.

When I finished my coffee, she asked me to place my upside-down cup onto the saucer. She rotated the overturned cup a couple of times.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’d like to read your coffee cup,” she answered.

Divination. I’m not a believer in that sort of thing, but my soul wanted to know. This time, my soul made my rationalizing brain shut up.

“Please do. What do you see?”

She explained that the right side of the ear was my future.

She smiled when she saw it: trees. Lots of trees and a field of grass. In the field, a little girl and a butterfly. On the far edge of the field amongst the trees, a house.

“What do the images mean?” Of course, I loved the images, but I needed elucidation. My very exhausting mind at work, again.

Butterfly in flight: a gallant adventure
Someone playing in the grass: favorable, fruitful endeavors
A copse of trees: happy changes in one’s life

How did the coffee cup know my soul’s desires?

The images to the left of the ear were my past.

Again, she smiled: all was washed away. The past, swept away. Swish. Gone.  That is what I had been attempting unsuccessfully to do with the past: Let it go. Sweep it away.

Now is now and now I can be done with the past to move forward to that house in the country where a pretty little girl runs unfettered with the butterflies and the trees offer a foundation for my rootless soul.

All I used to know was that I was there but now I am here.

Now I know where I am going, too.

Louisiana.

I didn’t get this from the coffee cup. I finally listened to my soul.