Happiness at Happy Donut

My San Diego winter escape was only two weeks of February this time around, but felt — as all good trips do — like its own mini-existence. It helps when you stay long enough to hang up some clothes in the closet, plan a few outings, get a routine going. This year, I didn't have time for a side excursion to Prescott, and a nine-day visit to England was definitely out of the question, but I can't complain.

We gathered with my parents for birthday celebrations and ate lunch with an old friend, meeting her granddaughter for the first time. My little brother and I found a strip mall with Laotian, Vietnamese, and Chinese food just a few miles from the house. It had a coffee shop and a brewery, too. And there was sunshine and flowers, and rains that made for sparkling morning skies. Why go anywhere else?

At bedtime, I read selected Sawatdeeka Ricochet posts to my niece and sister. There's an audience for these pieces. Mainly, there's clamoring to hear "Frenchie Fever" for the umpteenth time.* And one day, my little brother proudly pulled from his car trunk a new karaoke microphone he'd bought from Amazon, pointing out its special features. Then my siblings and I had a night of noisy entertainment that hopefully didn't disturb the neighbors. Well, my brother sang. He would ask what we wanted to perform next, and then he'd do an earnest online search, and then once again the opening notes of an unrequested number would float up from the microphone and he'd start in. But my sister and I got our turns, too.

And of course, I walked, almost daily, in that beautiful canyon near the house and then sometimes in mini-hikes with my siblings. My brother drove me to Encinitas, where I got some work done in a coffee shop while he read a historical nonfiction book — his disciplined new hobby. Then we walked to an overlook, where the ribbon of beach and expanse of blue ocean spread below us while birds wheeled overhead. Bright yellow flowers rippled on the cliff's edge. A walk on the beach was in order after that. This was my first real visit to that town, and that day it was crammed with well-dressed hipsters getting high on sun and blue skies.

One of the highlights, oddly enough, was a morning in my sister's neighborhood, at a favorite donut hole-in-the-wall, a long room where faded plastic-covered stools surrounded a counter at one end. My sister, enamored with what I'll call "Happy Donut," stopped there after my niece's endurance of one more night of cotillion,** where she'd worn a dress and danced stiffly with the cleaned-up boys and listened to a lecture on manners from a hoarse presenter. I wasn't especially impressed with my overly sweet selection from the display case, but after one or two more visits,*** I had my order down better. One evening, the somber lady behind the counter (it said "open 24 hours," so we speculated that there had to be a cot in the back) slipped extra confections in each of our bags. We were being honored as regulars.

"Wouldn't it be fun," I said, indicating the old-fashioned counter, "to come back here one morning and sit there and have donuts and coffee for breakfast?" At that, my sister's planning wheels began to spin. "Let's do it," she said.

The next Saturday morning found us at the quite busy shop around nine in the morning, ordering coffee at the register and finding that a good-sized ham and cheese croissant could be had for $6. An older man waited on me, and realizing that he'd given me regular coffee instead of decaf, went out of his way to be kind. "That other coffee is mine," he said. "Now I'll make one for you." I noticed that the other customers in line talked to us as if we were friends sharing an experience. They wore pleased expressions as they scanned the menu board in this run-down city donut shop, like they'd won passes to the Magic Kingdom. And now I knew why. The whole family — I think it was a family — waited on us as if it were their honor to do so, like we were special guests.

The coffee, it turns out, was excellent, and I found out there was a generous refill policy. After my sister's routine fuming at my brother's delay, followed by his appearance with a white paper bag in hand (he'd gotten stuck in a line somewhere, with an elaborate last-minute plan to bring in a burrito), we sat with our drinks and food and took in the Saturday morning vibe. The guy behind the counter showed us the whole bucket full of eggshells that were just from that morning. Mornings had a pretty steady stream of customers, he said, starting from around 5 am. And not just on weekends.

We noted some of the customers speaking to the proprietors in an Asian language, and we caught one of the words. "Is that Laotian?" my sister asked. Turns out it was Cambodian. The older couple speaking with the owners looked at home, as if they were in fact daily visitors, with their smiles and their newspaper and their conversation. I could tell that they were special guests, too. And they were happy.

So were we.

*My niece was doing the clamoring. My sister was just editing pictures on a laptop.

**Whenever she caught my eye, she would put on a pleading face and stretch out her arm to beg for deliverance.

***It's never been my idea to visit ice cream parlors or donut shops late at night. No, it's not who you think it is — it's not always my niece. These proposals come from my sister.

Encinitas Beach from the overlook.

A tidepool that I persuaded my brother to photograph. It was so clear. "That should look cool in a picture," I said.