"Dear Coco," it starts.
A love letter to a granddaughter. Not with pen and paper, but with velvet, espresso and pencil.
Celeste Shaw-Coulston — local entrepreneur and owner of Chaps Diner & Bakery, Vinegar Goods, and Lucky Vintage — opened Cafe Coco in downtown Spokane in late July. Known for her beautiful spaces and bleeding heart, Shaw-Coulston has created a haven on East Main Avenue, pairing Chaps' bakery treats and cappuccinos with moments of peace and rest.
On a recent weekday, across from a case of scones and cinnamon rolls, a group of older churchgoing women chat about the sermon and the first time they saw a Playboy magazine. A business owner pauses for her lunch, a beet salad with greens. A man buys a woman a latte.
The cafe is named for Shaw-Coulston's blonde, pig-tailed, miraculous granddaughter Coco. But it stands as a testimony to Coco's mother, Megan Shaw, and the mysterious bonds between women, the pains and rewards of motherhood, and familial love given at all costs.
In the bright foyer at the front of the cafe, the three generations of Shaws talk and laugh. Shaw-Coulston gives Coco a new pair of jeans, while Megan watches her son's Michael Jackson impression.
Shaw-Coulston is Megan's mother-in-law, but the two are more like sisters, or maybe best friends, bound by an intangible "magic" most people reserve for soulmates.
"I feel like God really has kind of defined who we are," says Shaw-Coulston, who named her boutique Lucky Vintage for how lucky she felt when her son married Megan.
The pair sit in green velvet chairs under empty earthen pots nestled in nooks on the wall. Sunlight streams through the front glass, illuminating a weeping fig tree and a distressed window frame hanging in the center of the room. Through thin branches and empty panes, you can see toward the back of the cafe, where the cowhide chairs and espresso machines are.
The space is exactly as Shaw-Coulston intended it to be: transparent. Raw. Sacred.
Three years ago, unbeknownst to doctors, Megan's pregnancy with Coco became dangerous. Her placenta was attaching itself too deeply to her abdominal muscles. Mortality rates with this kind of complication are high.
Megan began bleeding about two-thirds through her pregnancy. Doctors tried to stop it to avoid delivering Coco too early, but weeks of bedrest were not helping. So Coco was delivered prematurely, mostly healthy, but with a little hole in her heart. Her mother, however, was bleeding out on the operating table.
"I was begging them, 'Please don't let me die, please don't let me die,'" Megan says. She pleaded with the doctors to keep her alert. "I'm just envisioning all my kids growing up with my mom."
Megan remembers looking at Coco while she fought to stay awake. Shaw-Coulston remembers dropping to her knees, feeling Megan's presence as she waited with Megan's four other kids at home.
Today, Megan and Coco are safe, dancing in the cafe and planning Coco's third birthday party for Sept. 23.
"Obviously, it's the biggest celebration," Megan says. "But her birthday is so bittersweet because it brings this up every year."
Neither Megan nor her mother-in-law want to remember how it felt being so close to losing so much.
"We love each other so much that it was challenged and jeopardized with Coco," Shaw-Coulston says. "Maybe my loss became almost like a North Star for me."
Shaw-Coulston didn't have a loving mother growing up. After a "really hard, abusive childhood" with her parents, she was sent to live with her grandmother in isolated rural Montana. Her grandmother pushed her to imagine a life beyond what she had. Shaw-Coulston became a teenage Olympic runner, a trauma nurse and an entrepreneur, with the unwavering support of a selfless, generous grandma.
"I think there's just a kind of pride that she would have, knowing we came from just not having anything, that I took what she did give me and I was able to turn it into something bigger," Shaw-Coulston says. "So I think everything I do somehow has a golden thread that leads back to her."
Cafe Coco serves light cafe fare, with croissants, cookies and Danishes from Chaps, plus salads, toasts, sandwiches and savory hand pies. The front case is full of sparkling beverages, alcoholic and not, while standard coffees and seasonal lattes pour out from behind the bar.
Shaw-Coulston's cafes have always been focused on much more than eating. It was during the pandemic that she first penned the phrase "food is Love." She printed those words on shirts and aprons, then sold them to support people struggling in the hospitality industry. Currently, she's selling aprons with the phrase and donating the proceeds to those affected by the fires in Medical Lake and Elk.
"Food is Love represents what we feed into our community," Shaw-Coulston says. "How am I feeding your soul? How am I feeding your spirit? It's with compassion, and representation, and sacrifice and love. And whatever, whatever is necessary to help take care of another human being."
Shaw-Coulston initially thought she'd open Cafe Coco in Vinegar Flats, where both Lucky Vintage and Vinegar Goods are. But she was stymied by the area's building permit moratorium.
When the storefront on Main Avenue became available, formerly home of Boots Bakery & Lounge (which moved across the street inside the Saranac Commons), she was thrilled. She made sure to ask Alison Collins, Boots' owner, for her blessing. Collins was only supportive, Shaw-Coulston says.
Today, the cafe's namesake thinks she owns the cafe, walking straight back to the counter to get herself a cookie. Everyone knows who she is, and she eats up all the attention.
Shaw-Coulston watches Megan watch Coco.
"If I do anything right in my life," Shaw-Coulston says, "I want to be a good mother."
Above them, in handwritten cursive on the wall, "dear coco" is centered in a white frame. It was written in pencil by Coco's older sister, then traced by another in Sharpie.
But the cafe safeguards the presence of even more mothers, daughters and granddaughters.
"It's probably not even just my love letter to Coco, but to everyone that has surrounded me," Shaw-Coulston says. "You are the sum of whose shoulders stood strong for you to stand on."
Shaw-Coulston turns pain into peace, becoming the mother she never had to anyone who sips a cup of coffee.
"I want to take care of you," she says. "I want you to take care of each other." ♦
Cafe Coco • 24 W. Main Ave. • Open Tue-Sat 8 am-3pm • Instagram: @dearcocoonmainstreet
