Ginger

I'm a business owner, a self-made woman, a true queen. When people come into my store they look at the little chalkboard I have hanging over the dashboard and the fake little succulents at each table, and they close their eyes in line as lilting folk songs float in from the speakers above. "This is such a peaceful place," they say to me, before they go sprawl out at the tables with their sugarcane-sweetened ginger tea. "You must be so happy working here."

They don't know what I go through. Every morning at 4 AM I'm stewing that ginger tea in a massive pot while I grind the coffee beans with my other hand and scrub the floor down with my foot. I rewrite the entire menu by hand because my four-year-old son decided to play with the chalk, which only makes sense because it's the weekend and his dad is out of town with his latest fling. I run down to Lowe's and pray that they still have leftover succulents in the garden section because some sensory-deprived college kid yesterday pulled all the leaves off of the one at Table 9. And most of the day, with the constant sound traffic of whirring machines and smoke detectors and kids talking and my sneakers squeaking across the wet tile, I can never hear Bon Iver or the Lumineers over it.

They all see the peace, but they don't see how much it hurts to make it.