ninanevermore | Tuesday – Sweet and Creamy

Today on my drive into work, I was thinking about how wimpy I am compared to my parents. I think of this every time I pour myself a cup of coffee. The coffee I drink is a sweet khaki-colored beverage in a cup holding enough cream to fatten up the Olsen twins and give them Marilyn Monroe-type curves. When I was growing up, I thought I hated coffee because I assumed that all coffee everywhere tasted like the coffee my parents drank: an unsweetened black brew that kicked you in the teeth and dragged you into wakefulness screaming and crying. They didn't use sugar. They didn't use cream (or even milk). They were children of the Great Depression, and expected their morning coffee to remind them of what the world was really like – bitter and dark, yet invigorating enough that they could say that they enjoyed every drop of it and couldn't wait for a second cup.

As a child, I only liked the coffee I found at wedding receptions. The beverage table always had pitchers of half and half, and I would fill my cup half full of it before topping it off with a little bit of coffee. This way, coffee tasted good. I wondered why my parents never figured this out.

"I like it black," my mother told me. "It doesn't need any of that other stuff."

My mother was a wise woman and taught me a lot of things, but this is one case where she was dead wrong. I can only figure that when they grow up dirt poor, people get so used to doing without nice things that they convince themselves that they don't like nice things to begin with. I tried, briefly, to teach myself to like this no-frills java when I was in college. I figured if I drank it that way for a few weeks, I could acquire a taste for it and maybe earn my father's respect. After about 2 days, I gave up when it occurred to me that if I didn't like something in the first place, it was stupid to try to trick myself in to believing I was wrong. It showed a lack of respect to my own natural taste. I also decided that having my father's respect was an overrated idea; he loved me enough to pay for my college, and that's all that really mattered. I then gave into my love of sweet and creamy, never to look back.

It was on an early date with Jeff that I learned to not be ashamed of what I love. After a movie, we went to an all-night café to talk and drink coffee. Jeff picked up seven sugar packets out of the caddy all at once, ripped them all open with one practiced motion, and dumped them in his cup. Then he systematically pealed the tops off of 6 tiny plastic containers of half and half, lined them up on the table, and them dumped them two by two into his cup. As he stirred the rich syrupy contents of his coffee cup, he noticed me looking at his cup in awe.

"What?" he asked.

"Wow," I said, "You like a lot of cream and sugar. I don't think I've ever seen anyone put that much cream and sugar in their coffee."

He gave a slight smile. "I like my coffee like I like my women," he said, "Rich, full-bodied and creamy."

"Oh," I said, thinking this over for a moment before adding, "I'm not rich."

"You're richer than me," he said with a shrug (he was on the dusty side of an economic crossroad at this point in his life), "Two out of three isn't bad."

Apparently it isn't. Now, 18 years and one child after that date, I still like a little coffee in my cream, as my mother used to put it. I suppose this means I have a different take on things than my parents. Life is may be dark and bitter, but I'm not going to kid myself that I like it that way. I'll at least attempt to make it sweeter and to make its watery texture more rich. Besides, I find shaving my legs everyday to be enough of a burden: the last thing I need is coffee so bitter that it puts hair on my chest.

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Current Mood: drunk
Current Music: Saber Dance by Khachaturian