Wherein a Waiter Makes my Day (in a good way, not in the Clint Eastwood way)

I always go to the same cafe for a coffee when I have a break between jobs. It's right downstairs from the English academy where I work, and it has a terrace in front of the ancient town hall, and the people are nice, and the coffee is cheap(ish). (Side note: here, "Tomar un café," or "Have a coffee" is often a euphemism for going to a bar to drink/eat something and chat. I regularly enjoy this Spanish ritual and don't know how I will cope once I have to move back to the espresso-less United States).

Last Friday I went at kind of a weird time: it was too late for the after-lunch coffee, and too early for the evening-snack-coffee, so there was no one outside on the patio where I chose to sit. It was a little chilly, but I had to take advantage of the late-afternoon sunshine as much as possible before returning to work. It took a while to get waited on, which is slightly unusual at this place. Maybe since I was the only one outside they didn't realize I was there. In any case, I'd put my headphones in to listen to my audiobook before they brought me a newspaper to read, so I was startled when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Thinking all manner of bag-snatching, loogy-hawking, kleenex-selling street people were watching me, I turned around. There, in his fuschia sweater-vest, was the bald, cross-eyed, snaggle-toothed waiter who is always so very nice to me, an espresso in a doll-sized cup balanced in his hands like an offering.

Me: (laughing in surprise) "Is that for me??!"

Awkward cute waiter man: (with a small, slightly embarrassed smile) "Yes, of course, if you want it." 

Of course I accepted; I always order the same thing there, and they know me. This only served to hammer that home. It felt so nice to be included, known, and paid attention to. A part of a mini community in a bustling city. But every time something like this happens it breaks my heart a little bit. Because I am reminded how painful it will be when, someday, I have to leave it all behind.