COFFEE TIME [F, 7-12-24]

BEYOND WINTER: Irrelevant Musings of an Old Man—COFFEE TIME [F, 7-12-24]

 

Helen and I have been watching the old [from 20 years ago] “Gilmore Girls” series on Netflix. The main characters are always seeking coffee, asking others for coffee, staggering around looking for coffee. Coffee is their holy grail. Yesterday, Helen said, “They always get coffee, but they never drink it. They get a cupful and start talking and set the cup down and abandon the coffee. That is sacrilege!”

Yes, there is a spiritual dimension to coffee. Coffee is even called “the common cup of Methodism.” If you’re not a coffee drinker, that’s okay. There are other ways to share. In the morning hours, though, coffee is a divine gift.

Helen is both serious and joyous about coffee, especially the beans we grind ourselves, the chocolate pinon of the Rio Grande Roasters. [1] My brother, Jim, and his wife, Millie, turned us onto chocolate pinon many years ago. They live in Santa Fe. Those people know about artful things, like chocolate pinon.

Each morning at 9:30, I grind the beans and start the coffee pot going. At 10:00, Helen stops paying the bills or sorting through recipes or calling some utility to explain that we did pay our bill but they just don’t know it because they changed their system yet again. I stop staring into space. We sit on our respective sofas, opposite sides of the living room, facing each other, and enjoy our “coffee with.”

“Coffee with” is a term we picked up when we lived in Amish country, as in, “You want coffee with?” The “with” is some sort of pastry.

We sit and sip and talk. You would think that it is hardly necessary to have a designated time of day to talk to each other. We spend 24 hours together each day. [2] but there is something different about talking while sipping a cup of coffee, with a piece of a pastry your daughters had delivered, as an anniversary present, or something Helen baked herself from the recipe of a now-gone friend. [3]

We spend an hour or two at coffee time. A little bit of schedule reminding, but mostly reminiscing, talking about old friends, little children, funny happenings, cancers past, appreciating how lucky we are to have lived long enough to be totally decrepit. How lucky we are to share a common cup.

Sorry. Got to go. Kathy is coming over from Brown County this morning and bringing “coffee with.”

John Robert McFarland

1] Strangely, the Rio Grande Roasters are in Little Chute, Wisconsin.

2] Well, granted, about half of it is sleeping, either at night or any-time naps, so only about 12 hours a day for conscious talking.

3] Trina Mescher was the Lay Leader of St. Mark’s UMC here in Bloomington, IN at the time of her death. She was an early-childhood education expert and a noted cook. One potluck, she brought her marvelous “blueberry buckle.” Helen and the other bakers demanded the recipe. “Oh, it’s in that cookbook,” Trina said, “You know, the one with the cover falling off.” Helen knew exactly which cookbook. All women of a certain age received the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook as a wedding gift, and after the requisite years of use, all those covers were falling off in the same way.