Coffee and I

     We’ve heard it, smelled it, tasted it. Some like it. Some hate it.

            And then there are those of us who love it. Ours is a passion and sentiment that rivals even that for chocolate. It wakens, welcomes, speaks, socializes, feeds and even puts the bold to bed.

            Mom or Dad let me try it when I was a little. I didn’t like it. I marveled at the bitterness. It must be one of those magical grownup things. Perhaps that wondrous aroma promised the revealing of a mystery that was yet beyond me.

            That mystery is coffee.

            Coffee was part of my life from my preverbal days. It fascinated me. Mom and Dad drank coffee with milk. I remember the cloudy white center in that singular light brown liquid that evolved when a cup of it was left forgotten. I often saw the cloud in the bottom of a cup in the sink, too. A gentle shake of the cup produced delightful transformations.

            Dad had a plastic mug with a removable wire handle. It was a sparkly copper brown color with a white lip and white inside. The white often bore horizontal rings of brown staining. Like the rings on a tree, the space between the rings revealed Dad’s coffee drinking style. He would sip and work, sip and work. Sometimes there was a big gulp.

            Long before the “Red Solo Cup,” Mom and Dad and a whole bunch of people in the 1970s used Solo cups. There was a plastic frame into which you popped conical disposable cups. I wonder if they still exist. Perhaps it is better if they don’t. Nonetheless, it was a remarkable idea for marketing. The inserts couldn’t stand on their own. If you bought the idea or bought the holders, you had to buy more inserts.

            That sounds like today’s Keurig style coffee makers!