I never drank coffee.
My dad drank coffee. My grandparents drank coffee. (Mom was a committed tea drinker.) I think Dad just drank instant at home. Is Sanka even still around? I don’t remember a coffee pot on the kitchen counter. I don’t remember the smell wafting through our house. Grandma and Grandpa had a coffee maker at the cottages. They had those big thirty-two ounce tins of Maxwell House or Folger’s. I know Dad drank copious amounts of coffee at the cottages and at his office.
When Mom took me with her to grocery shop, I loved the brief stroll down the coffee aisle. We’d pass the huge grinder and bins of beans and the smell put me under a spell. When coffee scented candles showed up on the scene, I became a fan.
I think I asked to taste Dad’s coffee once I realized that the aroma intoxicated me. My response? A resounding yuck.
I was never into drinking coffee or tea in the mornings, not in college, not at work. I was a championship sleeper so I never felt like I needed a pick-me-up. I’ve always been someone who gets easily overheated, so drinking warm beverages was a non-starter. In the frozen days of winter, if I needed a warm beverage I always reached for hot chocolate.
As a young singleton, my friends wanted to meet up at cafés. I loved the idea but as a coffee ignoramus, I would just order a hot chocolate . I’m pretty sure it was my friend, Cheryl, who said to me, “Why don’t you try a mocha? It’s like hot chocolate mixed with coffee.”
Mocha turned out to be my jam.
Everywhere I went I tried a mocha. Caribou Coffee in Ohio and Michigan. Bongo Java in Nashville. I found white chocolate mochas, dark chocolate mochas, peppermint mochas, black and white mochas.
We Ohioans were the last ones to get anything that I’d read about or see while traveling the country. Movies opening on the coasts in December…we’d get in June. Something fashionable at the mall? NYC had that two years ago. Starbucks? We didn’t get Starbucks until the late nineties. I moved away and then on a visit home I saw my first Cleveland Starbucks.
It wasn’t until G took me to France (a dream come true) that I understood and appreciated coffee. By the time I came home, I’d become a coffee drinker. A coffee lover. More about my trip to France in 2023.
I became a café girl. I spent countless hours in a peaceful creativity cocoon with my laptop, my earbuds, a book, a tablet and pens at the ready. I became the friend who always wanted to meet up at the coffee shop.
A kitchen cupboard shelf turned into a shelf for coffee making paraphernalia: a French press; tiny espresso cups and saucers; a ceramic pour over cone; a coffee bean grinder. Bags of coffee beans became stocking stuffer traditions.
I learned about Chemex. Lattes vs. cappuccinos vs. macchiatos vs. Americanos. Chicory coffee in New Orleans. Rhode Island coffee milk. Affogato.
When my poor dad had a stroke, finding an hour to sit and tune out the outside world turned into a life preserver maneuver. And the caffeine kick started to become a necessary infusion. I always had a coffee in my hand, walking into the hospital bracing myself for the day, waiting for doctors to show up with diagnoses, test results, treatment plans.
When I visited Mom in Naples, some mornings she and I would get up and go for a walk through her condo community and out a secret gate to a corner Starbucks. Then we ordered our drinks (mocha for me, chai for her) and sit outside on a glorious Florida morning, sipping. In January. Whenever I do stop at a Starbucks in town, that’s the one I choose.
Living in San Francisco, I discovered a coffee culture. By the time we left, our neighborhood had Ritual Coffee, Philz, Sightglass, Equator, Four Barrel, Blue Bottle, and Peet’s. Of course there was a Starbucks at every corner too but who wanted that? You could get that anywhere. (How quickly we take things for granted.) My friend, Rachel, and I had a standing date at a Peet’s on Fillmore St. We’d order a French press and fill our mugs while we sat and caught up on our lives and our knitting.
I flew from San Francisco to Detroit a couple of times in the fall of 2014. My mom had to have major surgery and I wanted to be there with her. The first attempt didn’t work so a month later we all had to come back again. The surgery lasted ten hours. The hospital had a building on its campus for family members who had to stay for an extended time. Those were hard days. One afternoon, my friend, Saejin, told me she was picking me up and taking me out for a few hours. It was a beautiful fall day in Michigan. We window shopped, but most importantly, we stopped and sat at a hip coffee shop and had lavender mochas. A true lifeline.
G and I honeymooned in San Francisco and Sonoma. Besides the natural beauty surrounding us, everything was pumpkins and scarecrows and cornstalks and gourds.
Pumpkin and apple everything. On the menus. At the coffee shops. By October 31, all of this was accompanied by skeletons and ghosts and monsters.
We walked around the wharf and made our way back to the hotel that night.
Overnight, we opened our eyes to snowflake window stickers and greens and reds. Trees in store windows, decorated and sparkling with lights.
It was magical. Like elves arrived and all night long replaced fall with the sounds and sights and smells of Christmas time.
A simple mug of coffee has come to mean comfort and friendship and love. Not only has a moment with my coffee brought me valuable quiet moments of perspective, it’s brought me laughter and joy-spiked times with my favorite people.
Thanks again for reading. I care about you. Please don’t forget to eat your greens.
I've always loved coffee but I came to understand the ritual of coffee drinking in lockdown. When nothing else was open, a little 'hole in the wall' coffee shop serving delicious local coffee almost onto the street was our sanctuary. The joy of fresh coffee when the world felt scary and crazy was something I will always hold dear. Joining a social distanced queue (standing in line!) for that precious cup was a never forgotten small moment of joy. Said hole in the wall coffee has now expanded and grown into two local cafes!
I love your substack so much my friend.