Kiva's Tea Bar and Spa

Kiva Lane recently opened her dream business: a friendly hang-out with wooden tables, cheery red chairs, and upbeat music, where people can sit with their laptops and sip espresso or smoothies; or they can book spa treatments such as facials and massages. I hate shopping, and I would almost never find myself around any of the stuff Kiva sells, but the friendly atmosphere of her tea bar/coffee shop drew me in.

Kiva started out in Los Angeles doing makeup for movie stars but wanted to work less with people's surfaces. "I wanted a way to help people feel beautiful from the inside out," she tells me. As a busy single mom with two active children, she needed a business she could slip away from, if necessary, to drive the kids to lessons. She didn't want an uppity kind of spa where people have to whisper. She wanted--and she has created--a place where one person can meet a friend for a long talk over a pot of tea, while another plugs in their computer and sips an egg nog latte. A lean yogi can feed his soul on miso soup while a more sybaritic type can stuff himself on baklava and buy his mom a gift certificate for a foot massage.

What I like best about Kiva's shop is her collection of stuff to smell. She sells aromatherapy oils, lotions, candles, and soap, and I'm swooning over a fragrance called "Green Tea" that doesn't smell a bit like green tea. I don't even like green tea. This stuff smells like clean laundry dried in the sunshine during apple blossom time. It smells like daffodils before they blossom, when they're just green and pregnant with the possibility of warm nights. It's not a bit flowery; it smells like soap, like lemon peel, like grass. Now I have something I can ask my kids to buy me for Christmas. They always whine, "Maaaaa, you never want anything. You don't collect anything, you don't wear jewelry, you don't drink or care about clothes or food. Other than a gift certificate to a book store, what can we get you?" I shrug my shoulders. I love gift certificates to book stores. But now I can also send them to Kiva's.

This is another in my series of portraits of People at Work. I prefer a closeup which I've put in Folio, but I'm posting this one because the idea is to feature the person and their work. I'm still focused on a writing project that I hope to finish by Wednesday, so I'm still not commenting much, and I'll never catch up, but I'm loving the way One Street, the idea I borrowed from Ursula Leguin, has found its legs and is giving many of us inspiration.