By Lauren Slattery

After almost six years of being vegan, I decided on a random Thursday that I didn’t want to do it anymore. Not for any particular reason really, but one day it made sense and the next it didn’t. So, next thing I knew I was in my car on the way to get a turkey sandwich. 

Two weeks later I began my time in Oxford, England. One month in a beautiful place to study and explore. I was excited to eat good food, or rather foods I just simply hadn’t had in years, and to walk everywhere and experience so many new things. However, I was also alone without a person I knew in a foreign country for the first time in my life.

 The first morning there, I woke up and realized that until class at noon I had no plans and had woken up in one of the most incredible places I had ever been. Quickly deciding that I couldn’t stay in my room until then, I got up and got dressed. All I wanted was a bagel and a coffee. Google told me that not even five minutes from the school I was staying at was a bagel shop. 

The bell chimed when I walked into the little store tucked in an alley. It was not even a bagel shop, but rather an ice cream store that just happened to also sell bagels. It smelled of fresh waffle cones and sweet ice cream. The small bell chimed every time someone walked in and each time the women behind the counter greeted them the same - with a cheery “Hello!” followed by a “Be with you in just a moment!”

I stepped up to the wooden counter with a register stationed between a bagel counter and an ice cream display to order my everything bagel with cream cheese, something I hadn’t had in years.  

“Are you going to have the chives, love?” 

I hadn’t heard what she had asked me so I hoped for the best and just said yes. That first morning I got my everything bagel with cream cheese and chives. It was a fun surprise and the following mornings to come I was glad to tell her yes.  

That morning and all the others that followed, I stood at the counter waiting to pay as she made my coffee, and we would talk as she did so. 

I told her I was taking classes at the college just down the road and that I was from the States. “Tell me about it” she asked, and I did. Detailing the rich green that coats so much of North Carolina and how lucky we are to have the beach, mountains and lakes so close to us. She returned the favor by telling me about all her favorite things in Oxford and the classes she also had just started taking.   

For the next month I went there at least once a week, almost always sitting at the same table. I quickly determined that the young woman who sat next to me most mornings was the woman’s daughter. We often shared a polite smile and nothing more. She sat in front of her computer or a book, like myself, and ate a pastry or a bagel before starting her routine of rolling her post-meal cigarette. 

I was honestly mesmerized with her small routine and found comfort in it each morning. She would move her dishes aside to make room for herself, and then reach for her supplies. Pulling out her rolling papers and tobacco before laying them on the table in front of her, now clear of books or plates. Swiftly she would begin, pulling loose tobacco from a bag and skillfully laying it inside the paper. I would watch her out of the corner of my eye each time she did so enthralled by how effortless it was to her. After she finished rolling it up flawlessly she would get up and head out the back door.

It was around this time that I would finish my coffee or my chapter, and begin packing up. Grabbing my dishes and placing my things in my bag, I would head for the front door to say a thank you and a goodbye to the women behind the counter. 

Her response was always the same, “Have a lovely day!”