Coffee.
I love coffee for all it’s amazing a wonderful benefits and how it helps make my bloodshot zombie mom-ness dissipate when my body fully finishes caffeinating.
But there is more to the story of my love of coffee.
My Gramms.
My Gramms introduced me to coffee. She always had her cup all day, every day full of the dark goodness.
She drank it black. Always. So do I….perhaps because that is how I learned to drink it.
As I got older and was able to enjoy a cup along with her, we would sit at the kitchen table and chat about life as we drank our coffee.
It was our time together. We were the only coffee drinkers in the house.
I grew up, got married, had a family….but, we still almost daily got together for coffee.
It was our thing. Whether taking her to a doctors appointment and grabbing some as a treat at the coffee shop, or her making some in the percolator, knowing I would be coming over soon….we always had our coffee dates to keep us connected.
My Gramms also loved cardinals. She even had a little porcelain one sitting on a side table. I remember it always being on that table growing up.
When my Gramms passed away unexpectedly almost five years ago, I spoke at her memorial about how I would miss those coffee dates….I learned so much about my Gramms through those moments shared over a cup of coffee.
It wasn’t too long after she had died, that I got a new phone. I had a message saved on my old one from her….the last one she ever left, wishing me a Happy New Year. I never wanted that message to fade. Ever. When things were changed over, that message got lost.
I’m pretty sure I cried until I couldn’t any longer. I know it was only a message, but it was my message, to me, from MY GRAMMS only a few weeks before she passed away.
I was devastated.
When we moved a little over a year ago to our current house, I remember seeing a cardinal here and there. It wasn’t until we were well settled that I began to notice them daily.
She has never been to this house, but I know she’d love it. When I cook in my kitchen or bake apple and pumpkin pies for the holidays, I think about how much fun we’d have in this kitchen. We had so many laughs in my last one that was tiny and she, my sister, and I would somehow cram in there and bake pies for our families on what became our annual “Pie Day”.
Sometimes, when there is a (very brief) moment when the big kids have left for school and the twinnies are happily occupied for five seconds, and I am able to sit at the table and drink my (amazingly still) hot coffee….it’s not uncommon to look out the window and see one or two cardinals.
And I smile. And sometimes I cry…because I miss those coffee dates with my Gramms the most.
I sometimes imagine what we would be talking about these days…so much has changed in the past 4, almost 5, years. Three more kids and seemingly a lifetime of change has occurred in that short time. And there are days I want to talk to her so badly about it all….
Over coffee. At the kitchen table.
I Spilled My Coffee 