Morning Coffee — A Love Story
In a city that’s still asleep, you wake up on a Monday morning, the Sunday melancholy still in your bones, and engraved in the part of your brain that deliberates whether getting up was really as much of a great idea as anticipated.
Through seemingly glued together mole eyes you try to navigate around the jungle that is your room, where trees have been replaced with cupboards and shelves. The only bushes there are to jump over are your clothes on the floor, that aren’t in a rush to get picked up as much as you are to pick up yourself.
Stumbling into the kitchen like a one-eyed pirate with a wooden leg has become a Broadway-worthy musical choreography, and sadly enough, also a daily routine. You are not in search for another eye, neither a functioning new leg, but rather something like a temporary cure that has helped you so many times before.
There are so many obstacles you need to overcome before you find the real treasure, but as soon as you spot it, hold it in your hands and take a deep breath as you open it, you realise that the hunt was all worth it in the end.
The chocolate and caramel notes coming from your bag that has traveled a long way for you to have this moment of peace every morning suddenly brings up many of your own memories.
Do you remember when you used to stay at your grandparents’ house, and the crisp cold from outside would brush past your cheeks every morning, while cuddled up in a cocoon of blankets and clothes and fuzzy socks?
Or when you’d enter the kitchen and you managed to get up early enough to see the sun shine through the kitchen window, and hear the radio harmonise with the sounds of your dad’s coffee machine?
As you bury your face in the smell that hits you right before you measure the first scoop, you close your eyes and let the aroma fill your body that is finally ready to wake up.
In contrary to your counterparts far on the other side of the spectrum, who have forgotten about the pleasure and luxury about a cup of coffee that’s not warming up a paper cup, (even if recyclable), you reach for that solid element that plays an important part in your ritual.
It might even add a hint of sentimentality and nostalgia to your experience.
You’re determined that this deserves all your devotion and time. Even if there is none of the latter for you at that moment, it might feel as if time has decided to stand still in just that one particular moment when you enjoy the first sip before you come for more.
For the ambitious, high achievers amongst us, who substitute their amphetamine with coffee and take out mortgages for promising mindfulness and yoga classes, the unconditional love for having a morning coffee in solitude faded away a long time ago.
Blinded by the potential gains and performance enhancing effects one might receive from coffee, if illusionary or not, it’s easy to forget about the simple beauty and pleasure of sacrificing ten minutes of your time to sit down and be in no one else’s company other than yourself.
Although they might tell you otherwise, for as long as your coffee lasts, there is no rush to do anything else but to sit down in silence and see the world around you wake up, knowing that soon it would be your turn, too.
With every last sip you take, the bottom of your cup stares at you in indication that it is soon time to go and face what seemed worse before your morning coffee armored you for what’s ahead of you.
As much of an achievement it might feel to have come this far, you know too well that your morning ritual only serves the purpose of marking the beginning of a long day, catalysing the first steps needed to take in your journey.
As any good affair, this one has yet again come to an end, too, and it is time for you to move on.
There are clothes to be put on and other faces than your own to be met, responsibilities to be faced and tasks to be fulfilled. But as you confront your duties, there is a comforting thought accompanying you all along the way:
That you will soon be reunited with your forgiving and loyal friend, disregarding all failures or successes you might experience.
There is a particular kind of unconditional love woven in the deepest part of this special relationship.
Despite all uncertainty that life brings with it, at least there is some safety in knowing that this was only one of many encounters, in which both parts are happy to get together and meet again for so many more mornings to come.
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Originally published at www.madrebelblog.com on February 14, 2018.
