coffee – Cindy Hval

It started with magic.

A toy coffee pot filled with brown liquid that “disappeared” when you tipped it to pour. I’d take my “Magic Pouring Perk” around the table when my parents had friends over after church and pretend to top off their cups of Sanka.

I usually got tips for my service, but what I really wanted was to sample the Sanka.

Alas, I wasn’t allowed a sip. Mom said coffee (even decaf) was an “adult beverage.”

And so, it wasn’t until college that I fell in love with the brew that continues to make mornings bearable.

I worked as a waitress, and one Saturday morning, I poured myself a mug from the large urn we brewed it in. It was so dark and strong, it took my breath away.

“Put some cream in it,” a fellow server advised.

I did, and as I sipped the earthy, milky beverage, I felt energized. The Friday night fog lifted. I cradled that brown mug and knew my life had changed.

At home, my parents favored Taster’s Choice. The instant coffee tasted like brown water when compared to the rich restaurant roast, so I confined my caffeine consumption to work hours. This was several years before drive-thru coffee stands sprouted throughout the Northwest.

Not long after I met coffee, I met my husband. His dad had immigrated to the U.S. from Norway at 19 and preferred his coffee so strong you could almost chew it. Consequently, Derek wouldn’t touch it.

We were given a Proctor-Silex 10-cup coffee maker for a wedding gift. We were too poor for Folgers (which, at the time, I considered the epitome of fine coffee), so I bought store-brand medium roast in large cans. About this time, flavored creamers became popular, and that’s all it took for Derek to convert.

By the time our kids came along, Spokane had gone Starbuck’s crazy. It seemed like there was a coffee drive-thru at every corner, so we sampled lattes and sipped mochas. I’m not a fan of those sweet drinks, but our coffee shop experiences introduced us to the flavor of freshly roasted whole beans.

Coffee drinking is a sophisticated slippery slope. As our earning power increased, so did our taste in java. One Christmas, we got our first coffee grinder. No more store brand cans, no more fancy Folgers, now we let Millstone beans rain into bags at the grocery store like we used to let jelly beans fill sacks at the candy shop.

Our sons drank coffee from their early teens, and our youngest took over the brewing operation in middle school.

We burned through coffee makers and grinders at an astonishing rate – each one a bit fancier. Derek, the former java-shunner, became a connoisseur, purchasing machines too complicated for my limited technical abilities.

Self-preservation led me to purchase my first Keurig machine. If, for some reason, my husband or son failed to brew the beverage (or worse, drank it all before I got up), I had to be able to procure my own.

The benefits and risks of consuming coffee continue to be debated, which is why an S-R headline caught my eye.

“How drinking coffee may lower your risk for diabetes.”

According to the Feb. 28 story, each cup of coffee a person drinks (up to 6 cups) lowers the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes by about 6%.

As someone with family members who’ve had Type 2 diabetes, I pay attention to the latest research regarding the disease.

The article went on to explain that coffee is a rich source of polyphenols – compounds in fruits, vegetables, and whole grains that are known to confer health benefits.

“A cup of coffee also contains fiber – up to 1.8 grams, or roughly half the amount you’d find in one serving of broccoli.”

To which I say, Duh! It’s made of beans!

According to the story, experts recommend that healthy adults consume no more than four or five cups of brewed coffee daily. Studies show that two to five cups is the range in which people are most likely to see health benefits such as a reduced risk of diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.

As I type this, the intoxicating aroma of French roast wafts from my Wonder Woman mug. I’m glad science says my morning brew is good for me, but I already knew that. It makes walking, talking and working possible every day.

Now that’s magical.

Bewildered, I stared through sleep-fogged eyes at the rack above the kitchen sink.

I saw Sam’s Star Wars cup, Derek’s Three Stooges mug, and a few others, but my Monday mug was missing.

One of the advantages of working from home is that there are no co-workers to steal your coffee cup or pilfer your lunch. (Well, there was that time in 2014, that Zachary ate the last piece of leftover meatloaf I’d saved for a sandwich. But I’m mostly over it, and only mention it every time I make meatloaf.) So, I was puzzled by the absence of my personalized Spokesman-Review mug.

I checked the dishwasher, but I’d emptied it the night before.

At the kitchen table, Derek shook out the newspaper and took a slurp of coffee.

“Have you seen my Monday mug?” I asked.

He glanced at the cup in his hand.

“You mean this one?”

Sure enough, he was sipping java from a pinwheel-decorated cup with my name on it.

I’d worried that anarchy might rear its ugly head during this time of pandemic, but I never expected the decline of civilization to begin in my own home.

“That’s my deadline day cup!” I sputtered. “It’s got my NAME on it! How can I be expected write newspaper copy without coffee in my Monday mug?”

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My husband frowned and pointed to a cup with a cat and a newspaper on it.

“Can’t you use that one?”

Horrified and uncaffeinated, I gasped, “That’s my SATURDAY mug!”

Before he could inquire about the other days of the week, I pointed to my “But first coffee” cup and my Wonder Woman mug.

“Those are for Tuesdays,” I explained. “I vary depending on my workload.”

Sighing, Derek poured his coffee into another cup and handed me my mug.

As someone who leaves the house every day and goes to an office, he doesn’t understand the sanity-saving sanctity of a well-established routine for those of us who work from home.

I swiped the newspaper and headed back to bed, coffee in hand. That’s when I stepped in a puddle of cat barf and went puke-skating down the hallway.

Apparently, Thor had upchucked his breakfast while I was explaining mug protocol to Derek. I was able to stop my slide by hitting the wall with a resounding thud. I didn’t fall, and more important, I didn’t spill my coffee.

“Nice save,” Derek said.

He got to scrub the floor while I cleaned bits of cat vomit from between my toes. Suddenly, he seemed anxious to get to work.

“Don’t forget our new mattress will be delivered today,” he said on his way out.

And I didn’t forget, exactly. I just got engrossed in my work. So, when the doorbell rang I was still in my bathrobe.

No worries. A pandemic plus is having a kid at home all day.

Sam obligingly answered the door and began to wrestle the mattress-in-a-box inside. It quickly became apparent that this was a two-person job, and I was the only other person present. I wasn’t strong enough to pull the box up the stairs, so I got pushup duties. Which is how I ended up on my front porch in my pink plush bathrobe at 1 in the afternoon.

Apparently, most of our neighbors are “staying home, staying healthy,” because there was quite an audience to observe our progress.

The box was heavy, but on the small side for something containing a queen-size mattress.

“I think it explodes or something when you open it,” I explained to Sam. “Let’s not touch it till Dad gets home.”

My last phone call of the day involved hashing out a complicated medical story. Thankful to be able to discuss it with a colleague, I said, “It really helps to have two brains.”

She quickly ended the call.

When Derek got home, Sam helped him unpack the new mattress. It didn’t explode; it just kind of sighed and got fluffy. When I described the scenario on Facebook, a friend said, “Just kind of sighed and got fluffy – the story of my quarantine.”

Pretty apt description for many of us.

Late that night, Derek and I stretched out on our new mattress. I was almost asleep when he nudged me.

“Tomorrow’s Tuesday,” he whispered. “Can I use your Monday mug?”