Sometimes my blog topics come from profound truths. Like this week, for example. Yes, I’m talking about coffee.

 

Frankly, I prefer tea.

 

Frankly, Lily, how would you know because you’ve never tried coffee? Our first experience happens sophomore year of college. We’re on a brief tour with a show from Whitman College, “Hold Me” by Jules Feiffer. First stop, Spokane, WA. We load into the hotel ballroom, raise the traveling set, do a marking run through and then. . .well, not much to do, really, for several hours until call.

 

Some of us haunt the Sheraton coffee shop. I think about ordering tea, but everyone else is having coffee so I decide to give it a try.

 

Five saccharine-laced cups later (!). . .Well, I was a bit overcharged for the performance. Also, the burnt taste of coffee left too long on the heating element lingered for some time.

 

That doesn’t sound very good?

 

It doesn’t, and it wasn’t, 9.

 

These days I’ve refined my coffee drinking. It’s a daily thing, two mugs in the morning and sometimes another one in the afternoon if I’ve got a lot of desk work still to do and am dragging. And of course coffee is now a standby for travel.

 

That’s what’s up at the moment. On Wednesday I drove 400+ miles from Walla Walla to Port Townsend to attend Mom’s Lifetime Achievement Award ceremony at the Wooden Boat Festival. The event was heavily attended and super nice, and I was moved by the love and appreciation so many people showed for Mom before, during and after the presentation. Perhaps that will be my topic next week. But for now- –

 

Coffee! In its own way, an elixir of life, and also good for easing seasonal hay fever. Coffee saved me when I stopped in Olympia, WA, the state capital, about 100 miles south of Port Townsend. 2:30 PM, 300 miles of road in the rear view mirror since morning, The Miracle of the Coffee, hot, not iced, was the answer to mental and physical fatigue in spite of unseasonably warm weather.

 

 

 

That was two days ago. I’m staying at Mom’s house- –

 

That’s my house, right?

 

Right, 9, same place since we moved in in 1962. My sister and niece live here, too, and in spite of the long drive and long days, it’s natural to stay up kind of late and visit. But we’re all getting up early, too. I’m just that way. My niece and sister are the opposite, but they are both teachers and this week is the first week of school.

 

So we’re dragging a bit. Bring on the coffee. First, my favorite mug:

 

 

 

Then the French press:

 

 

And:

 

 

 

Ah, that hits the spot. Over the decades I’ve traded in saccharine for collagen peptides and milk. And, Lily, FYI, we did stick mostly with tea until we reached our mid-20s.

 

Thank God you’re not a total savage.

 

Give me time, Lily, give me time.

 

Tomorrow comes the return trip to Walla Walla. I will of course have my morning coffee before rolling, and am in the habit of stopping at Naches in the early afternoon for the ritual cup of burnt tasting C-store coffee when I top off the Subaru’s tank at the Shell station.

 

Because fuel is fuel, right?