When he
brings me coffee in the morning, it’s good old-fashioned brewed coffee, made
with 3 coffee scoops of Maxwell House or Folgers or Dunkin Donuts and the water
from our well, passed through the filter to remove the iron and sulfur and God
only knows what else. He fills my morning
cup just halfway, just the way I like it, so the coffee stays warm, with just
enough cream to make it delightful but not cool. If I’m writing or knitting or reading, he’ll
refill my cup. Always.
When he
makes coffee after we have lunch, we split a French press, maybe made with fancy
coffee purchased at one of the new shops in town and the water from our well, filtered from God only knows. He uses the wacky wibble-wobble-double nipple
method as we saw Mrs. Marlowe demonstrate on an episode of The Brokenwood
Mysteries – one of a long line of BBC shows we started watching during
Covid - and the coffee is always perfect.
Just one cup apiece, but really, that’s enough for an afternoon, isn’t
it?
If he
makes coffee after supper, it’s from the Keurig, and it’s decaf for me,
regular for him, made with a little white pod that my green little heart would
love to recycle, but is almost impossible.
Yes, we tried those compostable pods John Green sells, but they exploded
in the coffee maker, pouring both grounds and weak coffee water into our
cups. And in a very If you give a
Mouse a Cookie way, the grounds remind us of my grandma, whose coffee from
the white and blue Pyrex percolator always included a healthy teaspoon of
grounds, and we laugh at how very grandma that was and how I still love chewing
on a few grounds.
If it’s
a holiday or a birthday, he makes pot after pot, pouring just a half a cup for
everyone to start with their birthday cake or sugar cream pie. If you’re still drinking coffee after an hour
or so, you get a full cup, but he reminds me, if it’s after 3:00, I probably
want to switch to decaf. We sit around the
table like a Norman Rockwell family, telling stories, playing games, calming
quarrels between the little girls and laughing.
If it’s
Tuesday, he hands me my coffee in a Life is Good travel cup.
If it’s a Sunday church morning, he hands me a cup of hot tea -- Yorkshire Gold, no sugar or cream or
honey.
If it’s Christmas,
it’s hot chocolate made with our secret formula cocoa mix (not such a secret – just
add a box of chocolate pudding mix), sometimes stirred into a cup of coffee.
It’s
November, and maybe we should call it our own Hot Beverage month. It’s a
big month. Our anniversary, a big birthday
for one of us, Thanksgiving. Lots of cool weather, lots of gathering together.
This November,
he brings me my coffee in the quiet. I
am sad over a disappointing and frightening election. And today, it’s a trip to the doctor for a
biopsy result. Whatever the outcome, we
will be ok. He knows the percentages and
they are good. He knows the treatments,
and they are do-able. He knows we have
each other, and we always will welcome each new day with a warm beverage – we will
always have coffee.
And I
will bring it to him.
Peace
