drink up

I had one of those moments this morning. Standing in my apartment, I had just scraped my eggs from the frying pan onto my blue china and was pouring coffee from the pot into my mug. The sound of the coffee meeting the mug hit me. Each of my senses were suddenly, beautifully assaulted. I was a million places at once. A tiny speck of oil hissed and popped onto my arm and I could hear the happy grumbling of early bird golfers in the snack shoppe, felt the sting of the grill and the promise and injustice of being sixteen. I was ten and feeling very small but exceedingly important, almost too excited to eat my breakfast, sitting with Grandpa Hudson at Walker's, the diner where everyone knew his- and my- name. I laughed with friends and drowned my Saturday morning last year in sugary syrup at German Village Coffee Haus. I was a candy striper, fourteen and pouring cup after cup of bitter, hot coffee to Sam, every week, while he waited for his dear wife's dialysis to be done, while he prayed for a transplant. I was in France, at my host-family's apartment, slowly sipping away jet-lag and smiling to learn that chocolate was standard breakfast fare. I was six, bouncing in the breakfast nook in my Grandma Bye's olive green kitchen, smelling that desirous black liquid she gracefully pooled into delicate cups, feeling the slightest urge of panic as coffee sloshed over the edges while she carried them to the table. It was last week and the waitress at Perkins missed the mark, just a bit, as she bent over the table to "freshen up" my cup. I was any age, smelling my Dad and the constant, lingering smell of coffee trailing from his breath. I was in any diner, in any kitchen, at any time. Places I've been and places I can imagine. For an instant, I smelled and heard and felt so many years and so many moments.

I love it when things like this happen. Reminders that small things tie it all together, this life. That the smell of breakfast and the slosh of coffee is a thread woven throughout my life, a repeated occurrence. In and of itself, it is not important, not of depth. But it reminds me that this is how life is. That if these mundane moments can all be connected in an instant, so can the important ones, the ones that inform us, illumine our paths. And perhaps even the mundane can. Perhaps a cup of coffee is what I need to learn from today.

I drink up, willingly.