Hey Rockstars, 

I’m writing this on Thursday night, and I really had to laugh at the series of events over the last 24 hours. Last night, I found out that my apartment building was power-washing the garage today, which meant everyone had to move their cars by 7 a.m. I cannot adequately express how little I wanted to participate in this.

I told Sarah (bff turned roommate), and her immediate response was, “Oh, we can get up and go get coffee together before work! And if we don’t make it, then we can wake up, move your car, and then go back to sleep.”

There was absolutely no reason Sarah needed to be involved in this. It was my car and my deeply inconvenient 7 a.m. problem. She could have remained peacefully asleep while I dealt with it. Instead, she immediately turned it into something we could do together, because Sarah is an exceptionally kind human being and a reliable best friend and has, frankly, spoiled me for all relationships.

This was not even our first ridiculous conversation of the evening. A few hours earlier, I had told her that I’m going to see the Don Quixote ballet, which resulted in me reading her the plot of Don Quixote. She looked increasingly confused as I explained the adventures of a man who has read so many stories about knights that he decides to become one himself, until I got to the part where Don Quixote mistakes a windmill for a giant and fights it because he believes the giant is going to attack a woman.

This absolutely broke her. When I then told her that Don Quixote loses the fight and goes to sleep, she decided that this was the most relatable part of the entire story. She also announced that from now on, whenever either of us is attempting an impossible task, she is going to ask, “What are you doing? Fighting a windmill?”

With that important literary analysis complete, we went to sleep.

Fast forward to this morning, we somehow got up. Now, Sarah and I have had morning adventures before. For example, last year we “woke up early” to go to Starbucks to get one of those bear cups?? Of course, to us, waking up early meant getting out of the house at 8:30. Which was indeed very early for us. Imagine our shock when the Starbucks manager told us that people had lined up at 4am for these cups. Hard pass. 

Regardless though, we did it today! We moved my car and decided that we are going to commit. To. the. Plan! Underneath Sarah’s work building, is a coffee shop called Gute Leute. For my 28th birthday (my golden birthday!), we went to Gute Leute for their omakase coffee tasting. Once was more than enough though because Sarah and I made a tactical error. We intentionally decided “oh, let’s make sure we have room in our stomach for all those drinks and not eat before the tasting!” … not realizing that 6 espressos on an empty stomach might kill our fragile selves. 

During that omakase tasting, however, we were mesmerized by the “O-Ah,” a combination of oat milk and a peach-lemon purée with hot espresso. It sounds a little strange, but it is delicious, and for reasons I refuse to understand, it is dine-in only. Sarah and I have talked about going back for one for years, so apparently being forcibly awake before 7 a.m. was finally our moment.

On the drive there, we discovered something deeply unsettling: there are a lot of people awake this early.

“Wait,” Sarah said, looking around at all the cars and the people walking around. “People are up this early?”

Without a moment’s hesitation I exclaimed, “WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?”

I really felt like I channeled my Lorelai because there is a scene in Gilmore Girls where Jason tells Lorelai he’s been up since 5 a.m., and Lorelai responds, “There’s one of those in the morning too?”

Apparently there is. And not only that, but people are doing things, driving places, exercising, going to coffee shops, and living entire lives while Sarah and I are usually unconscious.

At one point, I stopped at a crosswalk to let a woman pass in front of us. She was dressed for work and carrying a backpack, and Sarah watched her cross the street and said, with genuine admiration, “WOW. She’s going for her real job.”

I accepted this observation without question.

It wasn’t until an hour later when my brain finished buffering: “…Wait. We’re dressed up too. Why aren’t we going to our real jobs?” Sarah retorted, “well she looks like she does it all the time” 

And honestly, she did. This woman had the unmistakable energy of someone for whom being dressed, outside, and headed somewhere before 8 a.m. was simply a normal Thursday. Meanwhile, Sarah and I were cosplaying as morning people because our apartment building had exiled us.

Sarah looked around at all these apparently functional members of society: “This is the life my mom wanted for me.” I think that was the moment we both understood that whatever this morning was, it was not the beginning of a new lifestyle.

We got to Arlington around 7:20, only to discover that Gute Leute was not open yet, because apparently we had become so committed to our brief stint as morning people that we were now arriving at places before they opened. We decided to walk to another café and get pastries for Sarah’s coworkers while we waited.

At some point, Sarah started crossing a street diagonally and I could not figure out where she was going. I had not yet seen the walk signal, so naturally I asked, “Are we dying?” But without hesitation, I followed her. 

Sarah burst out laughing: “I love how you asked, ‘Are we dying?’ and then just followed me with no hesitation anyway.”

In my defense, if Sarah were leading me to my death, apparently I had decided we were going together.

We got the pastries, Gute Leute finally opened, and we ordered our O-Ahs. … Then we proceeded to wait twenty-five minutes for these drinks. Somewhere in that process, Sarah looked at me and said, “I love you, but we are never doing this again.”

I agreed. And yes, I don’t believe either of us.

Because when the drinks finally arrived, we were SO HAPPY. Years of remembering this bizarre peach-lemon-oat-milk-espresso concoction had apparently not exaggerated it in our minds. It was just as good as we remembered.

Sarah took approximately one sip and immediately asked, “What is the membership like in this café? I live here.”

Sarah does not live there. Sarah lives with me, fifteen minutes away. But apparently, going to her office once a week, and a cafe she goes to approximately the same, constitutes her residency.

By this point, the combination of waking up far too early and finally getting espresso into our systems had made us completely delirious, and every little thing (funny or not) was killing us. At some point, Sarah said, “It’s gotten to the point that I could do anything at work and they’ll say, ‘Oh, she’s just having a rough day,’” and we laughed about it for approximately five minutes.

We both agreed, “Us up this early, we are menaces to the world.”

“I don’t think it’s going to get better,” Sarah said.

It did not.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, Sarah also said to me, “Where am I going to find someone who finishes my sentences?” And that one stuck with me.

There are people who show up for the big things in our lives, and that matters enormously. They celebrate the milestones and answer the phone when something goes wrong. They help us carry the things that are actually heavy. But I think there is something really special about being loved in the mundane: by people who become so woven into your ordinary life that you almost stop noticing how extraordinary it is.

Sarah knows where all my sentences are going. She remembers the weird coffee drink we loved years ago. She hears that I have to move my car at an unreasonable hour and immediately starts making plans around the word we. And somehow, because she was there, an annoying notice about power-washing the garage turned into a morning I am now sitting here writing about.

So much of a life is made up of things that would never qualify as milestones: moving cars, driving to work, getting coffee, crossing streets, waiting twenty-five minutes for a drink, talking on the phone with someone you love and recounting this story before bed. And somehow, with the right people, ordinary life becomes lore.

I know that from now on, one of us will inevitably ask whether the other is fighting a windmill. I know that Gute Leute is apparently one of Sarah’s legal residences. I also know that there is an entire population of people who wake up early and go to their real jobs every morning, and apparently they are living the life Sarah’s mom wanted for her. And when I thought Sarah might be walking us directly into traffic, I voiced my concern and then blindly followed her anyway.

I joke all the time that Sarah has ruined me for my future husband, but there is probably some truth underneath that. Being loved well teaches you what being loved well feels like. It raises your standards, not because everyone in your life needs to love you in exactly the same way, but because you learn what it feels like to be considered automatically. You learn how it feels when someone sees your inconvenience and thinks, Okay, what are we doing? You learn how it feels to be known well enough that someone can finish your sentence and loved well enough that ordinary life is simply more fun because they are there.

And of course, at the end of my eventual giant wedding, I fully picture myself gathering my things and starting to leave the venue. My new husband will presumably ask, “Where are you going?” and I will say, “I’m going home to Sarah. Where are you going?”

At which point this poor man will have to explain to me, “we’re married! We need to go together!” 

Which, okay. Fine. I understand conceptually that this is how marriage works.

But where is Sarah going??

Until next time!

xo

Sandhya

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