Even when I scrub it, there is proof that it is used, loved, every morning. The handle knows my palm. I open and tap out yesterday’s grounds through the kitchen window to fertilize Trini Lopez — the wintering lemon tree. I know how much water to add by the sound. The coffee is sprinkled gently by heart, along with the scrambled reciting of The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, (often forgetting his last name, but always remembering “coffee spoons.”) I twist on the top and place it on the stove. The gas click click clicks in perfect rhythm and my morning’s measure is complete.
It’s never just coffee. Nor the rising sun. It’s the accounting of love’s measure. No matter the night. This morning will be measured beginning with my coffee pot. Life will offer you all kinds of starts. Recalling “what he said,” or “what she did,” or “how I should have,” or “when will I,”…. And I can easily get caught up in them all, until I realize I need an empty hand to pick up the handle that holds the coffee that starts my day, and I let everything else go. And so it begins….
Some things you simply know, even before Google confirms it.
I love birds. I love Sparrows. I guess because they’ve always just been around. Maybe it was that assurance I gravitated toward — before, during, after the storm, they were constant. Like my grandparents. Like my mother.
They pop up in my sketchbook consistently. Almost knowing when I need them most — when I need that blessed assurance. Yesterday one arrived atop my image of our coffee pot. A reminder, I suppose, that just as certain as the coffee I brew each morning. Love wafts on the scent of it throughout our home.
I googled them after breakfast — the sparrows. This is what it said — “They are creatures of quiet resilience, navigating storms, finding shelter where there is none, and moving forward even when the winds push them back.” Isn’t that the way that I, we, could begin each day, with this quiet resilience… There’s coffee on the table, and kindness in the air.
Whenever I need a reminder about how things can change, I give myself a coffee break.
After that first lukewarm, bitter taste from the bottom of my grandma’s cup, I swore that I would never drink it. Both corners of my mouth pointed down as I tried to brush the remaining grounds from my lips. “No, no, no!” I said with zero hesitation.
That certainty gave way a little when I had my first dunk. I snuck my chocolate chip cookie into my mother’s cup while she was making a point with her sister-in-law. Both the crumbs in her brew and the smile on my face gave it away. It was delicious. A purest, and not a dunker like my aunts around my grandma’s table, my mother urged me to get my own cup. It wasn’t immediate, but dunking led to sips and sips to drinking, and then amid the warnings of stunting my growth, (just as they had warned my lanky mother), I began to love a cup of coffee.
Not all bitterness can be brewed to beautiful, but I have to believe there is always a chance. Each morning cup tastes like opportunity, possibility. I smile, and give this day a chance.
It functioned, of course, but it took a minute for me to fall in love with our kitchen. I suppose as with any love, I had to show it what I really needed. Not just breakfast in the morning, but a welcome. A real welcome of comfort and possibility — joy in every shade of blue. So I painted it. Just like in the cartoons, I want the scent to make a hook and lure me in — so I make the bread. I want to avoid the fax machine blare of the espresso maker — so I brew the coffee, puff by liquid puff on the stove. I, we, bring it flowers to say we know how lucky we are to be here, together, at this table.
Certainly I learned it from my mother — if you want to be loved, be loving. From my grandma — if you want to receive, give something. And it was from my ninth grade English teacher, Mr. Rolfrud — if you want to be a part of someone’s story, you have to share yours.
I see it more easily now, because of them. In places and people. So I’m able to fall in love with my kitchen, daily. My bathroom. My husband. Myself. My life. I step into the blue of the morning, and think, isn’t it lovely?
Getting to know each other, she asked me what books I had written. It was my publisher who had referred me to this hair stylist. As I listed them off, she said, twice, “Oh, I have that book!” Both delighted, we began to wander freely in each other’s story. I knew my hair was safe in her hands.
At any book event that my mom attended, people would say, “Oh, this is so me,” or “You must have written this about me,” or “It’s me!!!” — to which my mom would reply, “Actually it’s about me!” We would all laugh, knowing that everyone was actually right.
We all want to be seen. We need it to survive. There is the ineffective shortcut of shock, that so many want to rush into, but this is not sustainable, nor fulfilling. No, we need to be seen joyfully, gently, heartfully. With empathy and wonder. Kindness. Slowly.
I saw them on display as I made the coffee this morning at my friend’s house. My cups. My story. Resting next to the Lefse recipe of her mother — her story. I suppose that’s what friendship is, the combining of our stories. Newly coiffed and caffeined, I smile out the window, ready to write a new page. Will you join me?
It seems like about 100 years since I last sat at this restaurant, so I wasn’t surprised to learn that they did in fact celebrate their centennial.
We used to say it so casually, usually accompanied with an eye roll, “Oh, that’s so 100 years ago…” It could have meant last summer, or last week, this thing we were describing that we were so “over.” I didn’t hear my mother say the words to my grandma, but I felt the sigh, when she suggested that we go to Traveler’s Inn for coffee. Maybe it was the weight of the “church basement” coffee cups, or simply the weight of time that passed. Hadn’t we actually gone there after church together as a family? Hadn’t we sat there in the certainty of all that weight? Between death and divorce, and rejection from the very church that led us there, perhaps it seemed almost an insult to my mom that these cups remained intact, while everything else was shattering. Still, we went.
I hate to admit it, but while the cups were clanking against saucers. While still uniformed waitresses brought out pastry rolls on big trays, I thought my grandma was old. Out of touch. I loved her so much, but couldn’t she see? Couldn’t she see this was all so yesterday? Couldn’t she see that no one was traveling to get here? We were the only travelers, and we had gone beyond. We had packed our emotional bags and were making our way to mall coffee. To lightweight mobile paper cups. To the freedom of tomorrow.
My foot shook under the table, as if to pump the giant clock’s second hand. I was sandwiched between the past and future. My mother and my grandmother. “How’s your shitsky?” I asked my grandma, praying she’d eat faster. Both of them tried not to spit the coffee out of their mouths. What? What did I say? “It’s schiske,” my grandma said. (Though I still don’t know if that’s the right way to spell it. It’s not even google-able.) My grandma made these pastries for years in her farm kitchen. They laughed at how wrong I was. I laughed at how wrong I was. And we sat there, in the laughter, without time.
Traveler’s Inn is 100 years old, and I’m not over it. I love my grandma and my mom, like no time has actually passed.
The barista called out “Devony…” We looked around a little. No one else got up. I went to check the coffee. “And here’s the second one for Devony,” she smiled. Somehow Devony made much more sense to them than Dominique. But the coffee was delicious — a rose by any other name, I guess.
And we don’t fare a lot better when using my name. Jodi is always spelled incorrectly, if not made into Joni, or Josie, or Joey. But it doesn’t really bother me, as long as the coffee is good.
It’s so easy to get hung up on the little details. And I’m not proud of it, but I can do it as well. Take the gym, for example. Each morning I go down to the hotel fitness center to use the tread mill. If you don’t pull the emergency stop button and put it back on, it doesn’t reset. Not a big deal, but then the time doesn’t reset and unless you checked the clock, you can’t measure your workout. I used to get very annoyed by this. One day I heard myself saying, “How hard is it to just reset the button when you’re done???” And then I heard it… “How hard is it???” Indeed. Now the first thing I do is reset it myself. It’s not hard at all. And then I don’t have to be upset. “Oh, Devony…” I say to myself and smile, “You’re learning. You deserve a coffee.”
My mother started drinking coffee at 14. That probably doesn’t sound unusual now to the Starbuck’s generation. But this was not chocolated or whip creamed. Not frapped or frozen. No, this was black coffee. From the stove. Drank from cups that carried the proof of exactly how strong it was. They told her it would stunt her growth. She laughed and grew taller. Maybe it was because her mother kept having babies. Maybe it was just an old wives’ tale. Or maybe it was her sheer will to prove them and the coffee wrong.
Of all the stunt worthy obstacles in front of her, coffee was the least of them. None of the other farm girls loved fashion. And certainly not Grandma Elsie. There was no money for design school. No time for dreaming. But she drank from the cup that defied logic and carried it high within her. She dressed for the life she wanted.
People will always be quick to tell you of all the things that can’t happen, won’t happen, shouldn’t happen… Warning you of the “what if it doesn’t…”. I was joyfully raised by someone who thought, “what if it does!” Raised by someone who urged me to stand tall. Not be afraid to grow. Even when my head raced above the others in grade school pictures she said, put your shoulders back, head up.
We don’t always get to choose our obstacles. But we do make the choice of how to get around, above and through. There are a million things that could stop us. Daily. Today I am as tall as I ever was. As tall as I’ll ever be. But I must decide, day by day, minute by minute to keep growing. I want to be a better artist. A better writer. A better human. I want to believe in the best of me, in the best of all us. To forget about the what if it doesn’t. The best could happen — and what if it does!!!!
It’s instinct now. I suppose I’ve done it for years, but for some reason I noticed it this morning. When making something on the stove, like this morning’s coffee, I have to tilt my head down and to the left. It’s no surprise that I’m taller than the last French generation, and the hood over the stove is a good reminder.
But I don’t really think about it. My head just seems to know, and makes the adjustment. Maybe it doesn’t sound like much, but what a marvelous creation — this brain!
This brain that worked for years and years processing one language. A brain that knew the signals and prompts. That navigated the grids and grins of one culture, now being asked to learn it all again, (and bend over a little if you don’t mind.) Even in the face of tears, and fears, and the I don’t want tos and the I cants, somehow it keeps going. Marvelous! And maybe it’s the heart that tells it so. Who can be sure who’s leading. That heart that got more than knocked by a kitchen corner and still keeps beating. So pained by love, still knowing there is nothing better. The heart that only smells the coffee brewing and looks forward to the day.
I mention it, not as a reminder of the struggle, but a reminder to give thanks. To take a moment and tell this brain, this heart — thanks for getting me here. For making the adjustments when life knocks us around.
I begin to miss it immediately. That last bite of toast. A spoon licked clean of homemade jam. And the cup’s final drop of coffee — it’s strongest sip of the morning. As Virginia Woolf would say — “a sip of the divine specific.”
Maybe it’s the newness of it all. The beginning. The conversation so fresh and coherent, laced with headlines and caffeine. Lingering in the sugared possibilities, I am not doing. Not ahead, nor behind, I just am. I know that soon I will be studying, typing, splashing, moving, creating, but at this moment, while the beans have magically moved from brew to waft, I float with them, over tabled worries and responsibilities. Light as I will be.
I am, by nature, a day-filler. I’m a doer. A “let’s get things done” person. And I love it. To create is joy. Whether it is canvas or confiture (jam), I have a real need to make it. A pace that speeds me to the blur of day’s end. A pace that outruns (sometimes), that overcomes (sometimes), but always forces me to stop. And just before I fall to sleep, brushing away the should-haves and could-haves, weeding through the less-than-“devine,” I smile, I breathe, comforted by the calming thought — it’s almost time for breakfast.
