the pull of the morning: coffee, coffee, coffee

Popular advice says not to drink your calories, but I love to drink my calories. Hand me some coffee, some tea, a cranberry and ginger beer, a mint julep and I’ll contentedly sip. Coffee is a staple of my morning. When I go to bed, I feed the cat his two measly treats and pull my vitamins from the cabinet over our drink station. “That morning coffee will be so good” is often one of my final kitchen thoughts. 

I did not start drinking coffee until after I had given birth to my third son. Before that apparently I sprang out of bed with energy and motivation and only needed to enjoy the aroma that came from coffee. My entry drink was a Frappuccino from Starbucks, more sugar than coffee. You couldn’t pay me to drink it now but I felt so cool drinking coffee. So sophisticated. So grownup. For a solid decade, I drank cold brew every morning. 30 degrees outside? Cold brew. 70 degrees and sitting on the beach? Cold brew. Sometimes I made the cold brew myself in a large Tupperware container that my father-in-law twice excitedly mistook for cake. Sometimes I bought the cold brew. Sometimes I drank it with caramel syrup. Sometimes with vanilla creamer. Sometimes with condensed milk, thank you Pioneer Woman. 

Then my husband started drinking coffee. And I bought him a Yeti French press for a Christmas gift. Then we started buying good coffee beans and grinding them ourselves and having opinions on roasts and bean sourcing. And suddenly here I am boiling water every morning and pouring some extra creamy oat milk into my Fuller graduate mug. The cold brew is still in the fridge as a backup and for scones, of course. Does cold brew have a shelf life? We’ll see how the summer unfolds and if I swap back.  

Coffee returns my love stingily. I can have two cups. And absolutely none of that nitro cold brew that is so delicious. If I step outside my boundaries, the coffee will announce its presence later in the day in the form of crippling anxiety that will leave me searching my life for the source of this sudden onset dis-ease. After twenty minutes, my brain will casually bring up the extra coffee that I savored and I’ll remember that nothing extra is wrong, except the extra coffee. I will again remember that it doesn’t pay to mess with my coffee limits and after a few hours, I will return to normal.  

I love to show up with coffee. I love to walk the boys to school with coffee. I love to sip coffee on the beach, in a chair outside the camper, in my study chair with my Bible and notebook open. Coffee is a regular rhythm, a delight that I savor every day. 

Does it wake me up? Debatable. Does it put more spring in my step? Unsure. Do I enjoy the heck out of it every single day? Yes, yes, I do.