Goodbye, Old Friend

It takes something of great sorrow to bring me back to this old blog.  I got some sad news yesterday.  Kava [House] is closing.  The last day is two weeks from tomorrow.

It was like a punch to the gut.  I cried.  I immediately thought of a place and time so far away that I can hardly believe I was there.

I left GR back in 2004 and moved to Texas to live with my new husband.  I'm now back in Michigan with my son, but I live a couple of hours from Kava.  So much has happened to GR in the time I've been gone.  The Medical Mile has expanded in ways I never imagined.  Studio 28 is gone.  THE Studio 28.  I still can't wrap my head around that one.  That was the place to see movies, especially new big movies in Theater 1.  There is urban renewal galore going on.  But Easttown, my beloved Easttown, is much the same as it was when I left.

Back in 1993 I was a floundering young adult.  I was between colleges, working at Steketee's, and having a grand old time with my new best friend S.  She went to AQ.  I spent lots of time there with her and her friends.  Then we had a night.  Today when I look back, the memories aren't as crisp as they once were.  But I will never forget the night.  It was my first trip to Kava.  It wasn't Kava that made it so amazing.  It was the mood, the company, the talk we had.

It was a crisp October evening. It was plenty dark but we ventured on foot into Easttown.  Me and S and our new best buddy M.  It was the first time I'd spent any time with M.  He was a freshman and lived exactly underneath her in the dorm.  He was not like any 18-year-old I knew.  He had an old soul and smoked a pipe and the three of us went and had coffee and walked back.  On the way back we walked arm in arm, the three of us.  We sat at a covered bus stop and had a talk.  I can't remember what was said now, but it is roughly recorded in some packed-away journal.

After that, it was me and M and S.  There were other friends of course, but they were my best friends and we were the gang, at least in my eyes and in my memory.  And it all really started at Kava.  I ended up going to AQ myself the following year.  It was just a few blocks from Kava so that was a usual hangout for us.  Stupid or not, we thought nothing of walking into Easttown at all hours of the night.  Occasionally we'd go to Yesterdog, but mostly it was Kava.  My drink was the Cafe con Chocolate, my usual.  I never had a usual anywhere else before or since, but I did there.  I am talking about the sort of usual where the staff knows what you want before you even order.

M was from across the state, not from GR.  He wasn't good at navigating either, and this was well before GPS or iPhones or even the internet, to speak of.  So, after he left school, M would come to visit occasionally but would always meet us at Kava because that was the one place he was sure he could find.

I had another sort of friend, T.  He was way older than I am and really I just kind of followed him around like a little puppy dog.  But one time we actually *did* something, other than one of his art openings, was go to Kava.

When I was working at Steketee's out at the mall I'd drive in for lunch at Kava.  I had just enough time to run in and grab my Cafe con Chocolate to go and run back to the mall.  That was my whole lunch.  I still remember my Kava mug, a plastic insulated mug with a brown top.  It was too big to fit in any cupholder, should you be lucky enough to have one.  But I'm pretty sure you got a nickel off if you brought it, something like that.

But mostly the place just reminds me of my college days.  It reminds me of my days and nights with M and S.  I had various fallings out with both of them.  Today I still have occasional contact with M.  He was absolutely the dearest of friends and, with S, we had so many ups and downs.  Some was with each other.  Some was internal.  I guess it's so extra special to me because I'd never had real friends before them.  I was an outcast in high school, even among the nerds.  So my college friends have such a dear place in my heart.  Especially M.  His birthday is next week.  I'd love to go there one last time on his birthday and have a drink to him, but I can't.  But when I do go I will remember the first time I went there.  I will remember bringing the giant bunny there.  I will remember hanging artwork there.  I will remember the excitement with which I would pull up and walk around the corner hoping to see my friend in the window.  My best friend.  And I will have a drink to his health and smile at the memories and the fact that he now seems to have a pretty fabulous life.