155. Morning Coffee

 I have never been an early riser, though as I age I tend to do fine with a little less sleep so I am always up by seven, or at least awake. If I go to bed earlier than midnight I’ll wake up between five and six. I like to be slow and contemplative in the morning, designing my day but not rushing the plans. I gauge that planning by cups of coffee. I always buy my own beans and grind them. My favorite roast is a medium dark and I’m very fond of Starbucks House Blend, but I buy the Costco variety because it’s cheaper and basically the same product.

I don’t just have a single cup of coffee, I drink three every morning. I like it black and fairly strongly brewed—none of this weak western pioneer crap that is brewed so frugally you would think it was dishwater. I savor each cup and on the rare occasion I will add a little half and half. While the coffee is brewing I shave and get dressed. While I am savoring the first cup I read some verses from the Bible, usually in German, and write in my journal. Generally, the worst writing I ever do is with my morning coffee because I find little inspiration at that time of day when my mind is still pondering the day as a whole. It is my least creative point in the day. Coffee does little for me in the creative realm—in fact, I don’t typically feel any effect from coffee beyond the pleasant taste and the comfort of a morning routine.

When I’ve made it to the second cup I begin taking my vitamins. Typically, I no longer eat breakfast because I’ve learned that intermittent fasting reduces my cholesterol. Black coffee helps keep me from being too hungry—and I’m used to the morning fast. I usually finish that second cup somewhere in the pages of my journal writing and make it onto my third cup just as I begin to be more physically active.

I’m well aware that coffee is the national drink of Americans, though not every American may be so enamored of it as I am. You find it everywhere in this land. There are coffee stands of every variety in every little burg here in the Northwest, even if they are too small to have a franchise like Starbucks. While we have definitely been influenced by the Italian espresso, we staked our claim to coffee during the Revolutionary War when colonists threw the tea into Boston Harbor as a protest to the high British taxes. Apparently, we could get coffee at a much lower taxation rate from our South American brethren. So coffee represents much more than the drink we have with our donuts or our bacon and eggs. It is our national drink of independence.

So this morning as I sit here writing and drinking my favorite cup of joe, I am reminded not just of my day ahead, or how I just can’t seem to get a decent image in my head to make a poem, but of who I am as a person, as an American. With a few cups of coffee in the morning my joints get loosened up, the day gets planned, and maybe a little creativity creeps its way into my brain with the routine of those morning rituals that have become a part of who I am. I am an independent American with a strong connection to my ancestry that I taste and feel with every drop of coffee I drink. I am thankful for that and I am thankful for my morning coffee.