Morning in Providence

You don’t always know who is in line at the baker. During my time in Rhode Island, I’d often visit a shop on Broadway in the Federal Hill area of Providence, usually to have tea and a pastry after another long night of writing.

Most of their tables were those slabs on a wobbly metal stick, some suitable for at most two people if you both kept to a drink, a small plate, and didn’t mind bumping feet now and then. As per the industry standard, for a random selection of these tables you had to take care not to add any extra weight, else you’d soon discover a level of wobble not compatible with keeping stuff on the surface. Not every bake shop will slide spare cardboard under the offending table’s foot to even things out.

Tea with a side of wisdom

One time I showed up and the place was packed, but fortune let me grab the last tiny round table near the drafty door. After I started my dose of tea, an unassuming older gentleman who had also braved the busy walked up to my flimsy table and asked “do you mind if I sit here?”, which is not all that common for American cities. “I promise I won’t bother you”, he added. What he didn’t know, of course, is that it was much more likely I’d bother him. You can’t just rock up to me like that with a life behind you and not expect me to interrogate you about it.

So he sat down. It was Tom. He was passionate about education, he was eloquent, and he answered questions fully and with conviction. We were both straight forward type people. After some back and forth, he felt I should go get a degree in astronomy even though I’d be well over a decade off the usual track. I remained skeptical of that. My writing made him curious, and he recommended books to me, especially about politics and history. He’d long been a busy, well read man who never let age limit him an ounce more than nature demanded. “I’m just trying to stay relevant”, he said to me. Overall we had a great chat and both parted ways better for the meeting.

Tom Izzo used to be a state senator in Rhode Island, from 1988 to 2002. He spent most of his life advocating for education and health, continuing that trend long after his tenure.

Over the next weeks we met again several times at the same bake shop, and he introduced me to one of his friends. They spent some time discussing a new Leonardo da Vinci biography, going back and forth on whether it was entirely derivative or contained new sources. I sat and absorbed, gladly sipping my tea, seemingly often ending up in these situations that affirm interesting people are everywhere and occasionally only a nod away.

The last time I saw Tom and his friend I was carrying the newly finished manuscript for my first novel, shortly after which I moved back to Portland, Oregon and couldn’t meet them anymore.