Java Love

Coffee or Tea? The question was posed. My answer came swiftly.  Coffee. Hands down. No offense, Tea. I mean, I do enjoy a steaming cup of Earl Gray, made in a proper china teapot, every now and again—usually mid afternoon, with my feet up, but … its coffee that has my heart.

You have to understand. I grew up drinking coffee. I was raised on a dairy farm and it was my job every morning to bring the cows in from the field to be milked. This required EARLY rising and I am not, nor have I ever been, a morning person, let alone an early one!

Mom would roust me out of bed; I’d stumble out to the kitchen, wiping cobwebs from my eyes, to find a special treat waiting for me. A sturdy mug of coffee, specially prepared for me by Dad. Now, granted  it was mostly cream and sugar with a splash of coffee in it, (the original latte) but the privilege and luxury of sipping a mug of sweet creamy coffee made me feel  important, grown up and most of all, loved.

Charged up by the sugary octane, I would find my way to the mudroom for my coat and boots and head out into fields still shrouded in darkness to search out our herd of cows.

As I grew older the amount of coffee in the milky cup got stronger and while I eventually gave up sugar, the cream is still a very important part of my morning cuppa.

Now days, mornings are made possible by my husband, who almost without fail, brews a pot of fragrant coffee, before I’ve even rolled out of bed. When I scuff my way into the kitchen, he will hand me my cup. 

He knows to not try and engage in conversation with me until that cup is at least half way gone. That morning pot of coffee,I tell him, is one of the reasons I fall in love with him all over again. He chuckles but I’m dead serious.

I chuckle when I think of our early courtship, when he confessed to not being a coffee drinker and I, shocked at such an acknowledgment, drug him off to the nearest coffee house and introduced him to mochas. He can blame me for his coffee addiction, but I stand by my convictions. Coffee is a necessity!

I was terribly chagrined when a trip to the south a few years ago revealed an appalling lack of coffee stands. 

As in NONE. 

Sweet Tea, yes. Coffee? Uh, No.

I made do but after two weeks of Waffle House Sweet Tea, I was desperate. I threw myself shamelessly on the barista at the airport Starbucks and practically kissed her feet when she handed me my iced Americano. Hey. Don’t judge.

All our road trips start with a coffee stop. Gotta have proper fuel for the journey. I think the perfect road trip might be to plan it around espresso stands. We could call it research! One of the highlights now when we go camping is making coffee in my old fashioned percolator. That cheerful little glub, glug, glub as the water boils up into the coffee grounds and hits the little percolator knob? Sheer delight, I kid you not.

What else can I say about coffee? I love the aroma. The feel of the mug in my hands. But in the broader sense, it’s the conversations that take place and the relationships that build simply because someone says, “Let’s meet for coffee.”