Coffee

I often refer to coffee as the sweet brown elixir of life, and there is a reason for that. Like so many, I am literally non-functional in the mornings until I get my first cup, and if I go without I get the classic withdrawal symptoms (headache, fatigue and general crankiness). However, my relationship with coffee goes beyond the physical – I have a deep emotional attachment to coffee. It is so much more to me than just a simple caffeine source (of course, decaf is still blasphemy, or as Letterman put it “useless brown water”).
My love affair with coffee started very young. When I was small, my mother would let me (after much begging and pleading on my part) sip coffee from her cup with one of those tiny McDonald’s spoons with the long handle (does anyone else remember those? The bowl was about the size of my pinky nail). I genuinely liked the taste, but there was also the excitement of being allowed access to something so adult, and the pleasure of sharing something with my mother, despite her warnings about it stunting my growth.
Mom herself was a fellow devotee, starting most of her mornings with an extra-large from Tim Horton’s, picked up on her way to school (she taught first grade). I guess that’s why she never put up much of a fuss when I started to get serious about my coffee habit in high school, taking a to-go cup on the bus with me each morning and hanging out in coffee shops with my friends on weekends (hey, we couldn’t go to bars). Actually, I distinctly remember introducing her to the glory of the mochaccino with whipped cream one afternoon at the mall, likely during one of her epic Christmas shopping trips.
Coffee provided me with an income the first summer I lived away from home. I worked in a coffee shop in one of the downtown malls in Calgary. The pay was crap but the coffee was free! I think I did irreparable damage to my stomach and kidneys that summer, actually, and also my lungs since the shop was one of the few places inside the mall where smoking was permitted.
Coffee was my constant companion through my undergraduate and graduate degrees, and fuelled many a late-night study session in law school (there was a brief flirtation with green tea in there, but I rapidly returned to my true love). Coffee was also there on dates, and at meetings with friends. Even when I was at my sickest, and was told to stay away from it, I still couldn’t cut out that one cup in the morning, just that cup and five minutes to relax and organize my thoughts for the day ahead.
Coffee is a ritual. Grind the beans, pour the water, push the button – so simple I can (and probably do) do it with my eyes closed. Sharing it can also become a ritual. On Sunday mornings, I would make a pot and bring my mother a cup before leaving for church (I put in some time in the choir – I’m not religious but the choirmaster is a friend and desperately needed some sopranos who were not eighty years old). I love that we shared those casual, intimate moments, that without really thinking about it I found a way to show her that I cared about her and appreciated all that she did for me. I hope that’s the message I got across, anyway.
Independence and familiarity, stress and relaxation – these are all associated with the taste and smell of coffee for me. But most importantly, it is a tangible connection between my mother and me.
My mom loved coffee too.