Lift the cup, warm in my grip, the cool smooth clay, shaped and glazed somewhere in China; so the well-engraved letters state on the bottom of the cup. The cup contains the slush of deep, and steam lifting into the air – travel worthy. The cup, so stated in my first communion which held a liquid that puckered my lips and made me cough no matter how hard I fought it. My cup is a shock of hot liquid and so nerve endings smooth out.
Don’t slurp. A picture of my young mother in the house where I grew up, pouring my first cup of coffee, soon after my first communion.
“Don’t slurp your coffee, if you want some, drink it right.” But drinking it right was a conquest all its own. So I taught myself to sip not to slurp and I drink coffee to this day and can’t remember my last communion. I take another sip, puzzled with my memories. I feel the heat move inside me and need distraction. I notice the local newspaper sitting on the table. Yesterday’s news. I pick it up and throw it away since I’ll get another one today. Dy late news is cold coffee.
Cup in hand, I sip, not slurp. I move my lower lip up and down the smooth curve of my cup, thick and white. I searched hard to find just the right cup for my coffee and commute. I wanted the greasy spoon diner appearance that my mother would never allow in her house. I watched actors on stages, in film, sipping coffee not slurping, not remembering a word of their black and white drama but remembering their plain white coffee cup. My daughter moves into my sight and looks at me for a moment, contemplating me contemplating my cup. Summer break, hair on end, she reaches into the fridge and pulls out the milk. I smile, she grunts, walks to the counter and prepares her own cold, crunchy breakfast.
Looking at my watch I wince. Just time enough to fill my insulated cup and go. I tip the pot and try to ignore the aroma because again I’m drawn into memories that only the sense of smell can induce.
My brother and I in our grandmother’s kitchen. Grandma believes we are too young for coffee but we watch her fill the pot; water on the bottom, grounds on top. The smell of coffee we pull in with our still button noses and think–heaven; heaven in a smell. We watch and watch that pot on her old electric range and shout, when the liquid, jumping into the glass knob on top of the coffee pot, changes color; coffee color. So I pour a healthy amount of my own brew from my drip coffee maker. I pull the glass pot high and watch the coffee waterfall into the narrow mouth of my travel cup and think, I still have aim.
Damn, it’s hot for seven thirty AM. I hurry to the leather interior of my car and the radio that just plays classical music all the way to work–no shop talk, no car dealers telling me I’m determined by the car I drive. My coffee fits just so in the cup holder. The faint smell of yesterday’s ride home fills the air. A touch and the engine hums and the AC blows out the stale smell of yesterday’s air conditioned yet breathable musk.
The smell of coffee takes over before I’m at the end of my driveway.
There stands my Dad waving me to work. He looks at least 30 years younger because he’s at least three years in his grave this month. The old, gray, plastic, lunch box he used to take to work and the lighter gray thermos that snapped when he walked dangles in his left hand. The apparition disappears when I search for him in my rear view mirror.
My Dad’s thermos held his coffee until one day his doctor told him decaf was the only thing he should drink. He told me when I was away at college that the only thing he smelled in his thermos after that was piss. I smiled thinking of my dad, drinking pissy smelling coffee, because his doctor told him to do so.
He never listened to me.
I remembered when dad died; it was quick; it was sudden, a cup of coffee in his hand–that’s how mom knew, she heard the cup drop and crash on the kitchen floor. It reminded me of a poem I read by Charles Bukowski but I couldn’t remember the name of the poem. And for months afterward when I thought of my dad I thought of that poem. I found a novel by Charles Bukowski, in a used bookstore, “Ham on Rye,” and I bought it and I keep in my leather, accordion briefcase. I carry it with me everywhere and someday I’ll read it; “Ham on Rye.” My wife tells me I’ll be disappointed.
Out of the driveway and out of the well-manicured subdivision I’m on the road and have at least a mile before I merge onto US 20, so I reach for the insulated coffee cup and have a sip and think of the times my administrative assistant has had to help me cold-water-scrub coffee stains out of my tie.
“Why don’t you wait until you get to work to put on your tie?”
“Then I’ll get spots on my shirt.”
I remember her shrugging while scrubbing away at my silk tie, just before a board meeting. I looked through her lacquered gray hair and the wall behind her was fascinating between different and random lines of gray. She caught me staring, looked behind her like something was there, shrugged and muttered something about the smell of coffee on silk ties. I’ve been very careful ever since.
My favorite part of the day, merging onto US 20, leaning back and switching on the autopilot in my four-wheeled-leather-coffee-cup holder. I knew when I bought the car, the only reason I wanted it was because the headrest fit my neck to perfection. Yes, and every morning I take my foot off the gas on US 20 and the car floats down the road. I feel relaxed enough to pick up my coffee cup rigid and stiff and manufactured somewhere in India. Another careful sip so as not to drip on the tie. The sunrise is behind me and the road to South Bend before me. The traffic on this death trap keeps driving interesting enough.
Sip, and I feel on my lips the ridges and curves of my Indian made insulated, coffee cup, the 21st century’s answer to Eucharistic questions.
I smile at the smell and think, thank God decaf is out of favor during my trip to work. I put the coffee cup back and feel more than smell the aroma fill my car. I’ll think on my evening commute of my morning ride; the sun coming up, the heat of July on the road, the shimmer of humidity in the deep, dark, green trees so distant from the highway. My tie will be loose around my neck the first button undone. I’ll be thinking of something about tomorrow during the ride home.
Right now the coffee scent is real, the music soft, making the leather seats look too plush for a car. I can hear my wife complain that the leather is too hot for her short skirt and makes her legs burn and I squirm just a little when I think of her taking my hand and making me feel the heat of the leather between her legs.
So I look down for my cup of coffee.
The screech of tires and breaking metal, will it stop in my mind someday? I remember this; I felt the lid of my insulated coffee cup come off, pushing my two fingers up and away. I remember the spray and the burn across my chest and thought no saving the tie or the shirt, no feeling hot leather between my wife’s legs or thinking of drinking decaf in my older days.
