Coffee

Mmmmm, coffee... Last night it was coffee at La Madeleine with three ladies from our Life Group. This morning it's coffee at La Madeleine with an OPS travel companion-to-be after the current cup of Joe at home with Don is gone. Tomorrow, Don and I are going out for breakfast to mark our 14th wedding anniversary, and there will be coffee. Thursday morning will find me at Starbucks for coffee to meet a previous mentor who I have not seen since Fall.
I wonder sometimes if it is the coffee I like, or all the good company that seems to go along with it? I do notice that my favorite meals (breakfast and dessert) both seem tailor-made for coffee. (That might be influencing me a bit.) Or it could be the ghosts of Vacation Bible School and Women's Bible Studies past complete with Sylvia or Denise appearing with Frappucinos. It might go back even farther than that though.
My parents had no specific age at which coffee became a beverage option. They did set a single expectation: Drink it black, or you don't really want it. I think fourteen was likely the magic age, but it could have been fifteen. I know we were living in Midland because I can just picture my Dad sitting at the kitchen table in that house with the white on white cabinets and counters and miles of pastel wall paper. He would sit at that table with the newspaper and a cup of coffee. I can remember being less-than-impressed with the coffee, but liking sitting with my Dad during his morning ritual so I held my cup and tried to drink the stuff without actually tasting it.
Don and I wasted many nights during our high school years sitting in Carrow's (similar to a Denny's but with Strawberry Pie every Spring). We wasted so many nights sitting in the back swilling mediocre coffee, that they gave me a job on weekend nights my senior year in high school. The first time we ran into each other after high school, we swung by Carrow's for coffee to catch up.
Flashing forward to the year after Evan was born, I would get off the night shift at the hospital early on Saturday morning. With only eight hours available to snatch sleep, a meal, and a shower before my next 16-hour shift was due to start, I would make my way to Mom and Dad's house to share a cup of coffee with Dad before racing home to fall into bed. As our children arrived, Don and I would find ourselves with a child-free night thanks to grandparental visits. Those nights often found us with a travel Scrabble game spread out on the table at an IHOP or Denny's fueled by the caffeine and a desire to just spend a little child-free time together. Jumping forward another dozen years, on a trip to visit Mom and Dad on their mountain in the woods, 4:30 a.m. would find Dad and I with our dogs sitting on the screened porch listening to the sounds of the woods around us, talking about nothing, and enjoying the morning's coffee.