Monday, March 27, 2023

SOLSC '23 Day 27: Coffee evolution

 

First memories of
cold half-cups
light-brown, sweet,
left by my father
off to work before 
I got up for school.
I don't know why my
mother let me drink it, 
but she did.

Then, the plastic
demitasse cups, brown
with a paper lid, 
wooden spoon attached
cold coffee ice cream
eaten poolside on the
Armed Forces base
in Naples, Italy
still my favorite flavor.

Instant coffee in 
the dorm room, made with
water heated in an
electric coffee pot
Sweet-n-Low and
powdered creamer
powered me through
loaded schedules and 
late-night cramming.

Coffee from the
teachers' lounge
bitter, made better with
International Delight
paired with the yeasty rolls
the cafeteria ladies would
sell for a quarter.

Mr Coffee on my counter
a full pot shared with my
husband, before we
head off to work in different 
directions.

Decaf coffee, for six months of
pregnancy, and
two months of pumping,
a few months of nursing.

Coffee from the nurses' lounge
powering me through
twelve-hour weekend shifts
cleaning isolettes and
manning the front desk.

Decaf coffee once again
in deference to child 
number two
returning to full caffeine
when a week of sleepless
nights turned into months
years, six of them
before we all learned to sleep.

Coffee carried in thermal
travel containers
that took almost half
of the Mr Coffee carafe.

And now...
coffee from a little mini-pot
because I wake up two hours
before my husband
and he prefers his fresh
I add collagen, stevia,
a splash of sugar-free Torani
and enough half-and-half to
make my cup as light
as those first cups of
my father's coffee.

7 comments:

  1. Wow. I didn’t know you drank my leftover coffee!!! Love Ya, Dad.

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  2. I love to see where it started, how it changed, and where you are now! I can remember my first cup of coffee too.

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  3. Coffee is a part of so many of my moments as well. It’s so comforting and warm

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  4. What a journey of coffee drinking! (I love Torani in my coffee, too)

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  5. Coffee, how could I not read this? I like how you circled back to your dad's first cups of coffee. The stories your coffee tells show how it depends on you, too.

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  6. A lovely ode to coffee and life with its many transitions - how would we ever power through without it? I'm intrigued by you being allowed to drink your dad's coffee and how you circle back to it so beautifully at the end. A satisfying sense of closure. Scents and flavors are so tied to memory, with power to take us back to moments (like those in Naples). I didn't like my first sips of my mother's instant black coffee - ack! - but as a teen I tried a cup with cream and sugar at a restaurant and fell in love with it. It's an integral part of my day now and in recent years I have come to taking it black, imagine. My grandparents used Carnation evaporated milk in theirs and it was so lovely.

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  7. Love how you come full circle back to your father.

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