The First Time I Tasted Coffee

It was the bitter elixir my father would drink every morning. It was a cup he would mix for my mother upon her awakening. My parents didn’t brew coffee. They drank Nescafe. I remember asking for sips of their watery brew upon occasion to feel adult-like. It was a ritual for my father to rise every morning, put the pot on to boil, get out two cups, measure a teaspoon of granules into each cup, pour in the water, a teaspoon of sugar for him and milk for them both. On the weekends he would serve her in bed. He would then stand before the picture window in the dining room looking out at the lake. In silence he would watch the fog rising off the water and the sun glitter paths down the waves to him.

The silence of the house would rise and fall with our sleeping breaths. On those mornings I woke up early I would catch him in this private meditation. He would smile sheepishly as if I had caught him too idle. When I became an adult I would sometimes join him in silence, but those were very rare occasions.

It was in college I began to drink brewed coffee. It was like being introduced to stout after drinking Budlight. There was an incredibly talented chef in the college cafeteria who made luscious pies, gooey chocolate cakes and chewy nutty bars. After dinner a group of us, freshman from my dorm who had become fast friends, would eat several desserts, light cigarette after cigarette and drink cups of coffee. We talked about everything, meaning professors we liked, somebody’s boyfriend and the next trip to Dartmouth to attend frat parties. We felt free, self assured and a part of something bigger. When I went home at Christmas I went through nicotine withdrawal, suffered headaches and was too big for my Sassoon jeans.

For a wedding gift my first husband and I were given a percolator by my friends of my new in-laws. It looked like a relic from the 1950’s, retro before retro was cool. I had no idea what to do with it. My parents had after all been Nescafe drinkers. My new father-in-law who at the time had a Mr Coffee machine knew what to do and set to work showing me. My new husband didn’t drink coffee. The percolator got used when we had dinner parties. I made do with tea. A few years into the marriage my father-in-law Joel would stay with us after stints in the Peace Corp. Every morning I would wake up with the smell of freshly brewed coffee in the air. I would come into the kitchen and he would always say, “there’s coffee for you Rin”. Those were good memories. Joel and coffee were my morning companions off and on for a few years. He was world weary and sarcastically funny. It was a good way to wake up.

My first cup of real espresso was in Italy. My first marriage was falling apart. I was alone in a marriage with two young sons. A friend invited me to come stay with her at her home in the Cap d’Antibes. She suggested it might refresh me. Selfishly, I went over to see her alone. She brewed coffee every morning in her little French pot on the stove. We ate French bread from the boulangerie. We cooked dinners from the market. Then we went to Milan to visit one of her old lovers. He lived in an apartment on a narrow street with a balcony with doors that opened onto it over the street. We ate wonderful fresh pasta with zucchini and dried hot peppers crumbled into it, drank wine and sipped espresso listening to Pavarotti while the sheer curtains gently billowed in from the doors on the balcony. The room was filled with white light reflecting off the old 15 foot walls, subtly erotic paintings and modern furniture on gleaming wood parquet floors. It was the ultimate seduction of the senses. Soft and sweet ,tangy and cold, bitter and hot, the softness of the breeze, the coolness of the floor and the beginning of a longing for something I couldn’t identify. That evening at a party a lanky Milanese who was trying to converse with me said “Lorinda tell me your sad, sad, story…”.
Exit two husbands and now I make my own coffee. I look forward to the ritual every morning of measuring the grounds, pouring the water and sound of it percolating. After my sons leave for school I sit in silence savoring the steaming bite of the coffee. I have become my father.