Let’s Have Coffee

I started drinking in high school. It’s a habit that has stayed with me to this day. Coffee.

Every day, after I’ve hit the snooze button as long as possible, I shuffle to the kitchen, where my early-rising, coffee-angel husband has made coffee. I pour a cup and head for the shower. If the pot is cold–he’s traveling, or we’re out of coffee–the day does not start right.

It started around the kitchen table when I was growing up. It was part of our family ritual–a cup of coffee and talking. My parents were doing it, at breakfast and after dinner, and I wanted into the conversation, so I took a cup.

I don’t remember, but I’m sure it took some getting used to. It was a light roast in a can from the grocery store. No cream or sugar to make it go down easier–my dad told me I should learn to drink it black. A little cream is fine once in a while, especially if the brew is strong, but no sugar. He wanted me to be a versatile coffee drinker–cream and sugar aren’t always available, and if I could drink it black, I could partake almost anywhere.

His advice has served me well. I am not a picky drinker. Not only can I drink coffee black, I can drink almost any coffee–McDonald’s, or gas-station brew, even. Any temperature is ok–hot, cold, room temperature. I’ll drink anything but flavored coffee or the burned, sitting-in-the-pot-too-long kind.

College days found me in a foggy, chilly place where the warming, invigorating benefits of coffee and the art of roasting the perfect bean were elevated to almost a religion. Many days started and ended with a one-dollar latte in a pint glass or a to-go styrofoam cup from Espresso Roma. This corner cafe was always on the way; it’s large outdoor patio on the corner near campus. My friends and I would sit there for hours, working on solving the problems of the world.

My husband has always been an enthusiastic drinking partner–we share our love of all things coffee. I knew he was meant for me when he turned down the cream and sugar. Weekend mornings with him meant breakfast and Peet’s coffee, strong and thick in the heavy white mugs at Fat Apples or Mary’s Place, whipping cream on the side. The old joke, still pantomimed once in a while, was putting a spoon in to stir and pretending that the bowl of the spoon was dissolved by the intense coffee.

When we left Berkeley, we moved to places where coffee was just a thin, hot beverage, and we lost our way. I was drinking Folger’s for years until I discovered Peet’s delivery, and started a standing 4-pound a month order. I like the taste, the smell, the wake-up qualities. I will go out of my way to get a good cuppa, I admit, and am willing to pay for it.

My kids learned to drink lattes at the earliest age–I didn’t stop drinking java when I was nursing, but I did switch to decaf. I was charmed by the story, told by an Italian gentleman who ran an espresso stand outside our grocery store in Fort Collins, of his mother giving him a little coffee in his bottle of milk as a child. I waited to introduce my kids to my beverage of choice, though, until fears of keeping them awake at night or stunting their growth were past.

I have humble coffee beginnings, but I have become a coffee snob. It’s almost impossible not to in the Bay Area. My kids have surpassed me though, and sometimes refuse to drink coffee at my house unless they bring their own.

It’s not just the coffee itself. I don’t think it ever really was. It’s a taste and smell that create a certain experience for me; it’s companionship, conversation, comfort. It’s a liquid symbol that soothes and calms. The aroma, especially, creates an atmosphere. I have a pavlovian response to it: I smell coffee, and I want to sit down and share.

So when I say, “Let’s have coffee,” it more about spending time together than about what we drink. But it is also about the coffee.