The Constance of Coffee

My life has been permeated by coffee.

Since my birth, as far as I’m told, my house has been filled with half-empty, still steaming ceramic mugs filled with the liquid. My father used it as a remedy for life, drinking several cups a day and taking one step forward at a time. He drank it black, straight from the Keurig, as hot as possible. He would wake up early, don his robe and slippers, and start up the coffee machine. I could hear it working every morning, the sound of it prevailing through my whole life. It’s a magic sound- drops of coffee splashing up on the sides of the mug, the steady pour of the machine churning it out. Hearing it is like a meditation to me, now, a reminder that good things exist in every crack and crevice of my life.

I first started drinking it when I was in the 4th grade. My father started experimenting with froth and creamer and syrups. He would make me a frappe with a caramel drizzle, right from our Nespresso. Eventually my mom bought him a milk frother, which he still uses every day. It has its own special place in our coffee drawer, right next to the K-Cups and the unground beans.

He used to wake me up with a cup of coffee. When the sun rose and the light poured into my room, he would start crafting the perfect drink. He would come upstairs, knock on my door, and push the hot mug into my hands. I would always get a run-down of what the drink was made of- he would tell me if he used a different syrup, or technique, or milk. I cherish those memories, sitting in my bed with the childish wonder of knowing that I could take my time, a warm mug heating my hands. I would always take the first sip and give him my assessment. I don’t think I ever gave him a bad grade.

That was when I was a child. Things are much easier when you’re a child.

We had such a simple machine. It could only make a simple cup of coffee, plain and tried and true. As I got older, I wanted to be able to be like my father. I admired the way he drank his coffee plain and didn’t grimace. I started to try it, drinking my coffee with less and less sugar and less and less milk. Eventually I could drink it black. Around then we started going to a coffee shop every Saturday morning. We would try their different brews occasionally, but mostly we just went to get our usual order. Notes of praline and raspberry. I could never taste them the way he could, but eventually I got better at discerning the differences in flavor between the brews. That was where I learned the magic that a cup of black coffee can create. When you aren’t trying to make coffee something else, when you aren’t trying to fill it with sweetness and steal its complexity, you can taste how individual every cup is. You can taste how some brews are sweeter and some more bitter, some fruity and some chocolatey. You can feel the differences each brew promotes. These are the things my father taught me- how to take things as they are, and how to appreciate them.

Throughout all of this I got older. The bliss and innocence of childhood faded along with the sugar in my coffee. I became a teenager- jaded, angry, sad. Too many emotions to hold in my hands. I began to rely on coffee more heavily then, this magic drink that could help me to feel just a little more awake, a little more alive, a little more adult. The more I drank of it the less I felt like I was just pretending to be myself.

Around this time my family got a new coffee machine. Not on purpose, some friends gave it to us and the general opinion was that it couldn’t be refused. The machine was all buttons and features. It was shiny and sleek and massive. It could barely fit on our kitchen counter. You could bluetooth connect to it with your phone and ask it to make you a coffee from across the house. The arrival of this machine erased the necessity of my father in the process of acquiring coffee. It also invited the possibility of new, different kinds of coffee that I hadn’t been introduced to before. Espressos and Americanos and Doppios and Red Eyes. I began to discover that I could drink coffee that was even more bitter and even more effective in numbing myself than what I previously had access to. I started to drink it all the time, as if it was water. I would bring two thermoses and a mug to school every day. I broke at least six mugs in my freshman year of high school. I would drink entire cups of coffee comprised of shots of espresso. My father would make me frappes and I would drink a few sips and leave them discarded on my nightstand. We grew distant. I felt as if I had forayed further than him in this love we used to have in common. I wrongly considered myself to be an expert in this world, someone who knew what I was doing. We didn’t go to the coffee shop as much anymore. I learned how to take care of the coffee machine, how to clean it and refill the beans and the water. Eventually my father began to complain that the coffee the machine produced sometimes felt like a mirage- it started out wonderfully, the first sip being this promising warm thing, but by the time you got to the middle of the cup it felt like you were drinking the dregs. I told myself that I liked the dregs. My father didn’t like being lied to- a virtue that has aided him very much. He liked to take things as they were. He liked things to be steady and constant and he was right. He liked to have the same routine every morning, to put on his robe and his slippers and to make a black coffee and read, and then to make a cup for me. He liked the pain of a coffee machine that didn’t bluetooth connect to your phone and couldn’t make you a latte. He liked to put in the work of creating things himself.

Eventually, I grew older and my hormones settled more and I began to realize that when I drank 8 shots of espresso a day I also felt absolutely disgusting. I started to supplement more water into my diet. I began to drink the frappes my father would make me, and to abandon my thermoses for a water bottle. We began to talk more again. We began to go back to our coffee shop every week, to sit and to talk about the notes of the different brews. I began to watch what he did and to realize that I had an excellent father. A wonderful father. A constant father.

The day that I moved out, he got rid of the fancy coffee machine and bought a Keurig. He pulled out his milk frother and his K-cups again, blew off the dust, and started practicing for when I would come home. He told me that he threw out the big, technological machine because it reminded me of him too much, and it made him too sad to have such a looming and metallic reminder of my absence. Perhaps this is true. I think it is more true that he missed the constancy and reliability of a simple, one-kind-of-coffee machine just as much as he missed me.

When I go home, he makes me a beautiful drink. I sit on a stool by the counter and watch as he froths the milk, mixed in the sugar and the syrup, pours the coffee. He creates some art on the top and finished by lightly dusting it with cinnamon. He slides it over to me. He tells me what it is made of. I use the mug to warm my hands, and I take the first sip. I tell him it is amazing and that I have never had a better cup. On the weekends, we got to our coffee shop. Every day, I learn more and more how to take things as they are. How to look at something that seems simple and to really see it, all of its complexity and beauty. How to not overuse something and not disguise it, but how to truly love it.