Today I am Writing: On Being with Coffee

I used to be a "make your coffee at home only" kind of woman, and usually just the one steaming mug to fill the quiet of the early dark. But somewhere over the course of the year I got into the habit of one cup at home, plus one cup picked up at my on-campus-and-the-way-to-my-office coffee spot. There was just something about that small cup of warm, just the size of my hand with its flat disk of a plastic lid that I could peel right off as I settled into my desk. It changed the trajectory of my willingness to exist, on full and complex days.

Settling into May my time on campus is less, to the point where just going to campus feels worthy of the reward of a coffee stop. So this morning, when I stepped up to the cashier with my cup and she said, "A large one this morning, huh?" I laughed, and said "big meeting today, got to get through it!" As I walked away from her I chuckled to myself, thinking how when the cashier knows your coffee habits it might explain why you keep running out of money at the end of the month...

Yesterday morning I was working from home, upstairs in the cozy of my bedroom at my newly acquired writing desk. It was early, and the glow of my golden curtains in the morning breeze was as lovely as lovely could be. I had made a brew in my little french press and brought my cup up with me, leisurely bringing it to my lips as I brainstormed and wrote. It was time for another one, but I wasn't ready to interrupt my stream of thought. I heartily wished I could call someone up, a coffee delivery service, to rush me one right over.

It reminded me of a day after Christmas when my father was newly out of surgery and his fate was newly at odds with the world and my mother and I were slogging out of bed early to get to the hospital to find what we would find. On that day I was over-the-moon grateful (of the perhaps-irrationally kind) to find that there was coffee left in the pot, from the day before.

But as the days wore on, how I wished and wished and wished and wished, as we gathered ourselves early to get out the door once more, that someone would just deliver us a cup of coffee. The effort to find what I needed in the pantry and to get a new bottle of water from the basement and to reach for the filters high up in the cabinet felt nearly capable of sliding me over the edge each time. Everything else I could handle, but this one thing? Felt like I could not.

My recent coffee habits have included a once-a-week date with myself at the cafe just around the corner. I gather up all the things I'm thinking about and I get to the counter and order an Americano. I settle into a table or chair of choice, and they bring it to me, steam furling out of their hand-made mug. Sometimes I meet a friend there, and we talk about the piano-related things, and I hold my mug in one hand while the other rests along the top of my head, the universal sign for "Lauren is thinking, with excitement."

And I think of all of these ways of being with coffee. I think of how the mug in my hand helps me think, it helps me center myself in a universe of possibility. It is more than a substance that may or may not be addictive; it's a touch-point with reality.