old reliable coffee: always the same, always good

it is 10:30 am at Balzac's , a coffee shop in the Distillery district of Toronto; the walls are filled with vintage tin coffee ads ... the title of this post is one of them. I watch a man and child at a table near me. The child is a little boy, three-ish; he wears jeans with hole in one knee, socks and sandals, a tee shirt hanging longer than his little blue hoodie. He has just finished the immensely focused task of zipping up the hoodie. There are two cups on the table, a big one for the man and a small one on a saucer for the boy. I can see that he is drinking hot chocolate and he holds a big cookie in one hand. He has dirty blonde hair-- it hangs in bangs on his forehead-- and big gray eyes. I can see his eyes from my table; he is wide eyed, alternating between his cookie and the man's face.
The man is reading the paper, he glances over at the boy and puts the paper down; he glances at his PDA on the table, he looks left and right, every time a door opens or a customer orders. Man and boy share a moment of eye contact; the little boy grins, the man checks his PDA, the door, the bar...it's a busy place without a doubt.
The boy is moving his little fingers, making wing gestures with his non-cookie arm, his feet sliding sofly and purposefully along the iron stem of the table. It takes a long time for a little boy to eat a giant cookie... chewing is serious business, and the world of the cafe is ceaselessly fascinating, the rattan chairs, the marble tables, the way the cup fits in the saucer...he can lay on his belly on the seat of the chair, a little swimmer in a sea of tinkles and conversations; he can spin and he can fit his whole body there on that seat if he wants... and he can do all this and not miss a beat of cookie munching...his face is filled with hot chocolate and cookie mess. The man leans in a wipes him down with a napkin, rubs his own eyes, checks his PDA and looks left and right. The little boy says
" Daddy...." and then I can hear no more of his little speech. Daddy alternates between chininhandelbowontable, two hands on two knees, hands clapsed on table, leaning back... cookie almost gone, and the rattan chair is still a tactile cornucopia, a landscape, a vista... the little guy is swishing and twisting on his seat, swinging his little legs, smiling and gazing about...down to the last bite. Daddy springs to his feet and ushers the boy to the bathroom and, shortly after, out the door. The little boy walks slightly ahead; the man carries an eco-friendly bag... I see them turn off to the right as the door closes.

Sometimes I wonder about my Laban training... I am drawn to look, see, notice and describe
and sometimes I wonder...