Today I feel like an adolescent tasting coffee for the first time.
It’s as if I’ve found the remedy to morning. As if I’ve been jostled awake by a hollering mother in the hallway, shouting at me and one or more siblings that we’re going to miss the bus, and I’ve pulled together some assemblage of clothing from the floor and staggered downstairs where the mom now bustles about a kitchen island, and a dad leans cluelessly against the counter, sipping black coffee and skimming the paper.
Something in me shifted overnight. Some new piece of my brain developed, causing a keen alertness for grown-up dimensions, so that even in my chronic sleepiness I am all of a sudden sharply aware of the pot of black juice that has forever belonged to a designated corner of counter space. I cannot fathom the taste but I am certain that the ritual will welcome me into a new era. In the chaos of morning, I am unseen as I tiredly drag a mug from cabinet to counter and pour my first cup. The moment I take my first sip is subtle but profound, a ceremony that only I am aware of, a quick crossing over a bridge that I can never cross again. The taste is burnt, bitter, and hot. I hate it, but I need it. I take another sip, staring eyes half shut out the window over the kitchen sink in determination.
There’s a hand on my shoulder.
“Here,” says the mom, handing me a pitcher. “Try it with milk.” She’s smiling in that way moms do when they know everything but have to let it be.
I wait until she’s off somewhere else, and then I pour the milk.
That is the energy of today’s cup. Yesterday’s cup was nothing special, as is the case with most coffees. Today was just an early day with lots of work, which meant coffee on an empty stomach, and excitable mental energy paired with physical grogginess. I get nostalgic for quaint little discomforts like these, another example being the way that the distinguishable funk of urine, trash, and hot pavement combine into a scent that happily reminds me of an August trip to New Orleans. Now that I am mostly well behaved with my caffeine and breakfast routine, I am nostalgic for the weird stomach sensations and jitters that come with little sleep and lots of coffee, which make me think of sitting up in a Tim Hortons writing college papers on “Emma” and “To the Lighthouse” from 10 p.m. to 5:30 in the morning.
When I was an adolescent, our kitchen had no island, much less a coffee pot. No one in my family drank coffee until much later.
Instead I scavenged my first cup from a table of refreshments that was set up every Sunday morning in our church foyer. The first Sunday of the month included some spread of muffins and cookies, all of which I imagine being from GFS, but on the other Sundays I needed a way to meet my early-onset sugar addiction needs. When I was single-digits young, I mixed packets of sugar into water, but it wasn’t quite right. Meandering about the church between services as a young teen trying to get a feel for her place in the world, I learned that the sugar did much better mixed with lots of cream and some coffee.
Over the last 11 months, I’ve come to really miss diner coffee, and those heavy mugs it tends to come in. The mug never holds as much as you think, and probably that’s on purpose. If you take cream, you have a little boneyard of empty plastic creamer cups sitting in front of your plate by the end of the meal, a mundane image I never expected to miss.
A lot of times on a DIY tour, you crash with a friend or acquaintance from the show, and if you get along alright they might take you to they’re favorite cheap breakfast spot, and you might sit and eat eggs and drink coffee and have sleepy conversation. This is a nice thing to look forward to sometime far from now.
For now, I take my coffee at home, with milk, and try to get up to my own nonsense while I sip away the mornings and afternoons. Idle hands often drift to a cup of coffee. It’s something to do, somewhere to be. Anything could happen over a cup of coffee.
What’s your coffee story?
xo
Katya