Coffee

I first tried coffee when I was just a kid. I can still picture my pink melmac coffee cup filled mostly with milk and just a splash of coffee. But to me, I was drinking coffee. We had a percolator coffee pot just like the one pictured. We put 4 little scoops of coffee grounds in for a full pot of coffee. The sound of the coffee brewing in that coffee pot still echos in my mind and makes me smile. Mother and Daddy always had coffee with their breakfast and usually with dinner too. I still can see my dad's place at the table set for breakfast: a cup of coffee with a little cream, a bowl of pink grapefruit that my mom had scooped out for him, and 4 pieces of buttered toast, each cut in half horizontally. The only thing that changed was the type of fruit in the bowl. Depending on the season, it could be strawberries, peaches, or black caps. Daddy would stand in the washroom at the farm, cleaning up from morning chores as Mother tried to time the toast to be ready at the exact time Daddy was ready to sit down to eat.

As I got older, I gradually used more coffee and less milk in my cup. By college, I was drinking my coffee black. A cup or two every morning was a great way to start the day. More than that and the caffeine would make me jittery. I specifically remember limiting myself to one cup on my wedding day so I wouldn't be too hyper.

Over the years, Mother started using an automatic drip coffee maker instead of the percolator. And later still, coffee started to give Mother heartburn so she switched to a coffee alternative called Postum. That was eventually discontinued and she switched to drinking very weak instant coffee.

When Eric and I decided we were ready to have kids, I quit drinking coffee. I knew caffeine wasn't recommended when a woman was pregnant and by that point, it just made me jittery any way. I switched to herbal tea and drank that for years. Even after our kids were born and we knew we were done having more, I never went back to coffee.

Then Mother ended up in hospice. Without much sleep and the imminent loss looming, I was exhausted. One morning I walked to the family room in the hospice area and thought, "What the heck. I'll try a little coffee." I hadn't had even a sip of coffee in over 16 years. I poured just a tiny bit into a styrofoam cup and took a sip....yuck! How had I ever drank this stuff? I later found out that the coffee I tried was left over from the day before so it was a more than a little bitter. I remember talking to Eric on the phone later that day and telling him that I had tried coffee. He couldn't believe it. His family is a big coffee drinking family and they had never gotten used to me not drinking it. But it shocked Eric that after all these years I decided to try it again. I told him that everything changes when your mom is dying.

The next day when I knew the coffee in the family room was fresh, I tried it again and choked down a cup. After that, coffee started tasting good to me, and it became part of my morning routine again. Eric was still surprised to actually see me drink a cup though. Now he and I will sip on coffee while reading the morning newspaper together.

Sometimes it still seems strange to me that I am drinking coffee again, and other times it is hard to believe that I ever quit drinking it. But then again, sometimes it seems like just yesterday that Mother died and at other times it feels like it's been forever since I last saw her. 

Everything really does change when your mom dies. But it's kind of funny how just seeing a picture of that percolator took me back 40 years. I wonder if that coffee pot is still tucked away some where at the farm.