Give Me...Coffee!

When I was growing up there was ALWAYS a pot of coffee on in the house...morning, noon and night (well, after dinner anyways).


It kind of bugged me, actually. I thought my parents were weird people who needed to get a grip, and a life that was manageable WITHOUT coffee.


It wasn't the casual cup I was opposed to, it was the grizzly faced, grouchy growl I was greeted with upon entering the kitchen on an early school morning if the pre-set coffee pot timer had not gone off.


How is it that we end up becoming our parents in more ways than we'd like to ever admit (or have anyone point out to us!).


How is that I also ended up marrying a man with just a much a coffee addiction (maybe even more so!),  and a love for the Blues,  as my own father?


Enter life post high-school...Early morning college courses...Where's the coffee?


Late night studying for college courses...Coffeehouse anyone?


A semester of mornings as a student teacher...before facing the hoodlums...Where is the coffee? I don't care how cheap it is, or what kind of pot it's been brewed in. I'm NOT going in there until I've had my coffee! 


My first full-time job?


Haha...let me tell you about that...


I started as a full time temp at a large publishing company in Boston. It was a place I eventually hoped (and did) land a job, but those temp jobs...Oi! It would be tedious for me to explain some of the tasks that I spent Eight.Hours.A.Day. doing.


We'll just summarize by saying they sometimes required scissors and tape. As in taping figures and diagrams from an almost out of date edition of a College Math textbook into the manuscript pages of the new text. For HOURS at a time. Many DAYS in a row. Days that accumulated into WEEKS and weeks without end.


And this was just one of the MANY tedious temp jobs I did in those seven months before securing a position.


I suppose I was fortunate that I didn't get stuck in the reference division (aka...working on dictionaries...I love words, but my love has a limit).

Fortunately there was a very busy Starbucks right across the street from the front of our building. Thank GOD! Literally, thank you Lord for the blessing of that Starbucks! Many days, alright, most days....alright, EVERY day...when I needed a break I would get up and walk to Starbucks. I would return to my desk having breathed in fresh air and the aroma of coffee and sitting with a latte next to me.


Then I would begin cutting and taping again...except somehow it was just a little bit better because I had my coffee.


You can see how it has infiltrated it's way into my life as a daily necessity...


So, sorry Dad, for all the times, at 6:30 in the morning when you were awake and grumbling that the timer on the coffee pot had not gone off the night before, and lamenting how you could not begin your day with coffee and you irritated that it was not RIGHT there for you to start your day RIGHT then, and I was irritated that you were irritated about, of all things, COFFEE!


I'll admit, I thought you were crazy.


Now, either I'm crazy too, or one of the blessings of life is that as we become parents and reality presses us to learn things like how important coffee is, we develop great grace for our parents and ask for silent bouts of forgiveness for judging them in the ways that we did before we understood...


So...that is why I wrote this post...and why I stood  laughing at the Keurig machine the other day as I looked down and considered the words on the front of the mug that had just been filled with my second cup of coffee...

Here's to coffee helping us through parenthood! And to our parents who we misunderstood, and misjudged because we had NO idea!