Do you remember your first cup of coffee? Did you ever stop to think about how many pivotal moments in your life were accompanied with a cup of hot, aromatic coffee sitting at your side?
So many of us love the smell of coffee first thing in the morning! For some it is energizing, for others it is comforting. But what happens when that robust aroma is not expected? You walk into a room in the middle of the day and bam, there it is, coffee! Where does it take you?
The smell of coffee is probably one of the first memories to take up residence in the baby-Toni brain. I find it hard to recall a morning, growing up, that coffee wasn't part of the scenario. I did not partake of the drinking of coffee, just the sniffing, until I was about 14 years old. We were on a family vacation. We rented a 25 foot trailer and parked it north of Crescent City, California one night on our way to Oregon. There was a large lagoon on the east side of us, as we slept that night, and the Pacific Ocean on the west side. I had never slept along side the ocean so I spent most of the night listening to the pounding surf and wondered how the water got to the lagoon and if we would be washed out to sea.
In the morning, the fog was thick and the ocean sounded angry. Mom and Dad were sitting at the little table, warming their hands around their mugs as the steam rose above their coffee. Mom's coffee was black, no cream, no sugar. Dad's coffee; black, two sugars. I sat there in my light grey jeans and navy blue sweatshirt, just a little shiver going on, not so much from the cold as the "BIG-ness" of the event. Ocean. Fog. Giant Sequoias. Mystical mists that detached themselves from the thick fog and floated towards our little traveling abode as if to probe the contents and determine our purpose for intruding.
Mom handed me a cup filled to the brim, coffee, cream and two sugars. I wrapped my fingers around that cup and was warmed right down to my toes. Sipping slowly, I felt the whole world opening up to me. Instead of feeling like an intruder, I felt as if I belonged, probably the first time I felt like that in over 5 years, since leaving Colorado when I was 9. Not just belonged in California, but belonged on the beach that cold morning in the fog, belonged with those majestic trees. I was not an intruder, I was not an observer but I actually had a relationship with all the wildness of nature, I was in harmony with it. I wasn't afraid, and if the ocean had decided to come wash me away it would be an adventure not a battle.
Just one cup of hot coffee on a cold foggy morning on the ocean....pivotal!
Do you remember your first cup of coffee? What does that smell first thing in the morning do to you? What pivotal moments in your life were accompanied with a hot cup of java?
So many of us love the smell of coffee first thing in the morning! For some it is energizing, for others it is comforting. But what happens when that robust aroma is not expected? You walk into a room in the middle of the day and bam, there it is, coffee! Where does it take you?
The smell of coffee is probably one of the first memories to take up residence in the baby-Toni brain. I find it hard to recall a morning, growing up, that coffee wasn't part of the scenario. I did not partake of the drinking of coffee, just the sniffing, until I was about 14 years old. We were on a family vacation. We rented a 25 foot trailer and parked it north of Crescent City, California one night on our way to Oregon. There was a large lagoon on the east side of us, as we slept that night, and the Pacific Ocean on the west side. I had never slept along side the ocean so I spent most of the night listening to the pounding surf and wondered how the water got to the lagoon and if we would be washed out to sea.
In the morning, the fog was thick and the ocean sounded angry. Mom and Dad were sitting at the little table, warming their hands around their mugs as the steam rose above their coffee. Mom's coffee was black, no cream, no sugar. Dad's coffee; black, two sugars. I sat there in my light grey jeans and navy blue sweatshirt, just a little shiver going on, not so much from the cold as the "BIG-ness" of the event. Ocean. Fog. Giant Sequoias. Mystical mists that detached themselves from the thick fog and floated towards our little traveling abode as if to probe the contents and determine our purpose for intruding.
Mom handed me a cup filled to the brim, coffee, cream and two sugars. I wrapped my fingers around that cup and was warmed right down to my toes. Sipping slowly, I felt the whole world opening up to me. Instead of feeling like an intruder, I felt as if I belonged, probably the first time I felt like that in over 5 years, since leaving Colorado when I was 9. Not just belonged in California, but belonged on the beach that cold morning in the fog, belonged with those majestic trees. I was not an intruder, I was not an observer but I actually had a relationship with all the wildness of nature, I was in harmony with it. I wasn't afraid, and if the ocean had decided to come wash me away it would be an adventure not a battle.
Just one cup of hot coffee on a cold foggy morning on the ocean....pivotal!
Do you remember your first cup of coffee? What does that smell first thing in the morning do to you? What pivotal moments in your life were accompanied with a hot cup of java?
