Ode to my Cup (o' Joe)

Here I sit, this morning's coffee kept piping hot in my metal Lexus cup with rubber grips. It's black and silver, sleek as a car. The Lexus label wore off years ago, and I don't miss it. My loyalties are with Nissan anyhow.

I got this cup in the 1990s, when my father traded his Mercedes for a Lexus convertible. We got two of these, but I took one to Salisbury, and it went missing. My husband insists that I lost mine, that his is the one from which I drink every morning. Though he's serious about the ownership, he never uses it. He has his own mug, a heavy beast from the Renaissance Festival, given to him by an old best friend of mine that he never, ever liked. He likes the mug, though. Men don't care. A woman will trash all the gifts from the ex, but most men find the utility of a thing trumps an ugly memory.

I fell in love with the idea of coffee long before I bothered drinking it. In fact, I didn't really start until 1995, while I was publishing a coffee magazine called Joe.

Until then, I drank diet soda all the live-long day. I was probably ten when I first began drinking diet soda for breakfast. That's about the time I remember seeing it in our apartment as Tab and Faygo. I can even sing the song: "Hey, Faygo, Diet Faygo, what a way to go! Delicious diet flavors—how many do you know? Grapefruit, orange, cherry, berry, rootbeer, and fruit punch, ginger ale, pineapple, orange, lemon-lime, and frosh." (OK, I know orange is in there twice, but it was thirty-two years ago!) My fridge had them all.

We also had coffees: Maxim, Folgers—lots of freeze-dried, instant yuck in squatty, screw-top jars. It smelled great and looked rich in the clear, map-of-the-world mugs my mother got from her Nescafé proofs of purchase. It looked delicious after my dad dosed it with what he still calls "Cream Mate." But that first sip, watery and lukewarm, from my father's mug was enough for me never to pursue instant again.

It was almost the same with my first puff of a cigarette. My father smoked three packs of full-strength Kools a day, and I was seven when he handed me a butt to flush down the toilet. I posed with it in the huge, fluorescent-lighted mirror of my bathroom, drawing the soggy brown end to my lips for a drag, looking as sophisticated as a seven-year-old girl could look without having breasts. It was the worst taste I can recall.

Though the stress of college saw me hooked on Benson & Hedges Lights, I never got hooked on coffee. I figured the only way it would happen, if it hadn't happened by the time I was 34, was if they'd added some tiny bubbles to cappuccino, put it in a 2-liter bottle, and sold it for a buck.

But there was little difference between me and the coffee lover. I had to have my soda. I couldn't function without it. Though the aroma didn't waft through the house and up to my pillow every morning, waking up without it was next to impossible. In fact, while working on the first issue of my coffee magazine, I hit an all-time record: two 2-liter bottles a day for two weeks. I drank it from 8:00 a.m. until 1:00 a.m. I wrote then, "Will it kill me? Maybe. But there are worse ways to die. Giving up our vices will not prevent our untimely deaths by car or by crime or by bomb."

What made me go from cold carbonation to hot flat? What changed? Coffee itself. In researching shops around Baltimore for Joe, I had learned that coffee was different. I started drinking it at all hours of the day, enjoying it, even. My girlfriend and I would meet one night a week, after my class, at a nifty place called The Vanguard Café, a place with purple velvet-tufted walls and gilt lettering and comfy, overstuffed chairs. We'd have a double cappuccino and listen to jazz and eat crab dip. I'd spend my afternoons at the Grind with a large house blend. I'd coffee-shop-hop in the mornings for my research.

I started buying Key Coffee from The Daily Grind, the place I judged to be the very best. They roasted their own beans, and the coffee tasted fresh and bright and clean. Every morning, my husband and I would grind the beans in our tiny electric grinder, put two heaping tablespoons of coffee in a Melita filter, and, when the water boiled, we'd pour it through our individual filters. My husband developed an intense ritual with powdered creamer: he'd drop it in on top and watch the white swirl through the brown in a mini whirlpool. Only when it was gone would he stir. This has not changed. But today, he likes to have the coffee-making space to himself, meditate on that white swirl; once it is gone, his work has to begin.

A few years ago, when I went on Atkins, I gave up Diet Coke, my drink of choice, completely. It was, perhaps, the best thing I'd ever done for my health (whether I mean Atkins or giving up soda doesn't matter; they are equally the best things I've ever done for health). My migraines and reflux subsided. I knew this had everything to do with soda. Once in a rare while, I would drink one at night at school, "just for the taste of it," for the nostalgia, too, and I would get an instant headache.

I still buy Key Coffee every week—usually Guatemala Antigua. I grind it at the grocery store, because we go through it quickly. I'm not ashamed to admit that I drink decaf. Serious coffee drinkers sometimes chide me about that, as if it weren't worth drinking without the nasty, teeth-gnashing, jaw-clenching side effects, as if the taste of the coffee itself weren't worth it. For them, it may not be.

That's the difference between a junkie and a connoisseur. I know a guy whose hand shakes a little because of all the coffee he drinks. It doesn't bother him, and he makes fun of me for noticing. I'd feel much better if I knew it came from drinking good coffee! But the other night, I watched him drink four post-dinner cups of lukewarm swill from a giant metal pot. He said, scrunching up his face, "You drink decaf? Why bother drinking it?" That's a junkie. Drinking that much coffee at odd times of the day puts you at the mercy of Dunkin' Donuts or 7-11 or Café Crappé.

My gut's too good for that. Whether I'm camping in Utah for two weeks or staying at the beach condo for a week or taking an overnighter to Philly, my coffee, my Melita, and my mug are always in tow. They are carry-on worthy, as important as the camera and the earplugs.

Today, like every morning, I shuffle into the kitchen, put the brown plastic Melita crown on my royal cup, throw in a heap of decaf, sprinkle some full-strength grounds on top for a small charge, and I am ready for life. I make the lunches; I wake the girl. I make her breakfast and see the man off to his shower. I send them to school, and I walk the dogs. Before and after and in between, my coffee is there. It is always hot. It is always ready. It is always good.

And isn't hot and ready and good everyone's dream?