I wake to a haunting darkness outside my bedroom window. Colored blue/gray from the cold, a fat sheet lay over my town, blocking out my desire to get out of bed. Still I rise, knowing somewhere behind those curtains, beyond those clouds, past Venus, past Mercury, burns the blinding sun, shining warmly on my side of the world, as it will until the day I move on, and for millions of more years thereafter. The shade of a crowded sky, or my own blackout supplies, or my own dark thoughts, could never ever snub out the sun. It is the Original Reason for getting up in the morning, and gave humanity over to the Day Cycle.

So, now raised by the power of the sun, I do what any normal person would do; I drink water, I make coffee, I smoke. It is soothingly habitual, almost with nuptials, as I go through the morning motions of my mothers and her mothers, the same rising, done with a different mind, a different method, a different place surrounded by different things, but the same sun for all of this time. 

Weren’t my mother and grandmother nearly identical in their method? They brew the pot, doing almost nothing in the meantime besides imagining it being done, with pulverized store-bought coffee grounds dumped into a machine that looks like every coffee machine near the home kitchen sink. They had the white one. Add water. Add coffee. Listen for the final drips and then the sputtering sound of completion. Can’t I imagine my grandmother leaning against the kitchen counter with a cigarette between 2 fingers, the morning paper and a pair of readers ready on the kitchen table?

Mom would take herself outside, or wherever she felt was good parenting. There was probably a little coffee left over from the day before, so she’ll nuke the remains, douse with cream (or, ‘creamer’ I suppose), and enjoy the smoke and coffee simultaneously. She made it the way she ordered it at Dunkie’s—extra extra light, no sugar. That’s more or less the way I take my own Cup O’, except as a novel youth, I grind the beans, and I use oat milk creamer to reduce unecessary pooping.

I didn’t like coffee for a long, long time. I think it’s because my mother and my mother’s mother would drink the brown dust that came out of the giant blue and red containers, and that’s… not really coffee, is it? When I think of coffee as being a “bean juice”, that’s literally the stuff—beans mashed into an unrecognizable sand added to water. Isn’t there like, an art to the bean?

Oh, they didn’t care. When the sun got their asses up, or the kids, or the boss, they went for what would get them to where they needed to be next. They didn’t mince the necessity with any craft, any grinding or temping, any percolating or chemexing, just, coffee and a smoke. If this is the last coffee filter, you know you will be at the store before the next rising. If you forget and the line is long at the bright orange coffee shop, well, it’s grounds for being tardy for your next meeting, and justifiable at that. 

I methodically complete my own rituals under the same sun. I never drank coffee with my grandmother, or my mother. 

Actually, this is the part where one of my parents would pipe in and say, “That’s not true, when you were a baby, you loved coffee!”

Oh… well honestly I can’t believe this story didn’t cross my mind sooner in this session.

I would say I probably did not love coffee as a baby. I did not continue drinking it beyond what was supplied to me, and one story I’ve heard a few times over the course of my life heavily implies that I was far more interested in the ritual my parents were performing than the coffee itself.

I was of walking age, but I have no visible memory of this happening. Having foolishly (unintentionally) left some cigarettes and a cup of coffee within my reach, I did what apparently made sense in that moment, which was to crush the sticks of tobacco into the coffee and drink it. Ya know. Just like the adults do it. This ended in a trip to the hospital and a very upset me probably painting my Dad in a charcoal like substance. The story was always told in good humor, with my dad toothy laughing and my mom smiling, but having some class to look on at me with embarrassment and horror on occasion. Call is my Irish sense of humor, but I always found it pretty funny. Any stories of the acute danger I wrought as a baby is terribly humorous to me. I’m made of tougher stuff than that. Tough baby. Now, what I find so curious, was my powerful desire to perform the same ritual as them back then. I can safely say now I was absolutely doing my best to mimic them, but with an exactness none of my siblings ever committed at such a young age. I am pretty impressionable, was that already so deep in effect? Did I really just love coffee back then?

I was attempting to join in the ritual. When coffee is made, cigarettes are had, and that’s what you do. I think I observed it (almost as well) as I do now, and wanted to partake in what the God’s of my world were doing. My Dad and I drink lots of coffee together. It’s different from my mom’s coffee. He doesn’t smoke anymore (thank god, that shit will kill ya).

Dad buys all my coffee. I don’t think my mom or my grandmother ever had dad’s bringing them coffee all the time. Or ever. No wonder they had no taste for a decent bean? Still, there is such a ritual for each one of us, each with its own dimensions, fragrance, and legacy, played out similarly, almost identically, by those before us and those after us, beginning with the rising of the sun each morning, in spite or in service of either the golden streaks or steely grays in our eyes.

^_??

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