If you saw our Thanksgiving week #gratitudeovercoffee challenge on social media, you may have seen that one of our questions was “what relationships are you grateful for?” The challenge was to list 3, 5, or 10 answers to our question. I pose a lot of BRAVE Conversation questions to our Unimatic family, but for this one, I’d like to share my answer with you. Sidenote: it also doubles as one of my very first memories of coffee…
When I was a kid, we lived in an apartment in Bay Ridge Brooklyn, and down the hall from us was a lovely older couple, Dolores and Jim, or as I liked to call them “Miss Dee and Nimmy.” Miss Dee was my babysitter, pretty much since the time I could walk. I remember toddling, walking, running down the hallway to hang out with her, in my jammies, dressed up as a “princess,” in my soccer uniform or somewhere in the middle… She was an early bird, too (unlike my family), so some of my first memories were walking into her apartment in the wee hours of the morning, coffee already brewing and her up, reading the paper on the couch. We’d play make believe (she’d always let me be the princess while she was a dwarf, the evil queen or comical sidekick). On our walks, we’d let the trees tell us where to turn so that we could “go on an adventure.” We’d learn new words that my little 4 year old lips could hardly pronounce, for the sole purpose of shocking my parents when they got home. She (much like my parents), never treated me like a child. I was just a small human, with a huge imagination, who was willing and able to be part of whatever was taking place around me. I was never excluded because I was a kid, rather I was invited to join, and more-so, my imagination always had a seat at her table.
The world lost this bright, warm, fierce soul last month, so this newsletter is in her honor. In honor of imagination and of people who fuel it. In honor of how brave one must be to trust imagination over all, and to welcome it when logic seems much more “rational.” It seems like we’re living through a time in the world when we need more imagination, more “Miss Dee”s, if you will. So this month, we’re raising our mugs to Miss Dee, to her imagination and to the way she fueled mine. We hope that this holiday season, although different, brings you many moments around the table finding yourself grateful for the relationships in your life. I won’t have the chance to tell Miss Dee how grateful I am for her, but I hope you’ll acknowledge those people in your own life on my behalf. There’s no greater gift this holiday season than to feel feen, significant and cherished. We hope you give that to even just one person this holiday, over some of our coffee.
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An Ode to Coffee, from the #unimaticfam
Miss Dee wrote poetry, painted and literally engaged in any kind of craft I could dream up. But she was famous for one thing, her “Odes”… So, when I received this “Ode to the Unimatic” you can imagine how much it meant to me… especially now. Thank you for this gift, Stephen!!
"A Number Gets a Name
The world’s upside down and backwards
The winds are blowing ill
From this unique perspective
717 has become LIL"
- Stephen B., family of Unimatic #717
