Coffee and Her Father, But Mostly Coffee

There is nothing supernatural, despite what you may believe, about coffee with milk and sugar. It is not, as you may have heard, a form of witchcraft. Neither is it, as some claim, a style of martial arts. It's just something you drink, like light and dark are things you drink. It's something you smell, like good and evil are things you smell. It's something you taste, like right and wrong are things you taste. Coffee is a state of mind, but it's natural, not magical. Coffee is a system of ethics, a way of life. It belongs to earth, however. You don't have to learn it. It grows naturally. Coffee with cream and sugar will not save the world. It is the world.

Or maybe I'm thinking of something else.

Whenever she smells coffee, when she's walking through a restaurant or someone carrying a cup passes her in the hallway at work, she always thinks about her father. Dad kept his coffee cup on his knee—one hand on it to steady it, steam writhing visibly above in the drafty winter of the living room—as he sat in the big old leather chair that, although she had wanted it, her brother had taken from the house before she arrived after Dad died. She has never liked coffee. It is something other people drink, older people, men, serious and quiet people, Dad. She has never, as far as she can remember, liked much of anything about her father. He was a good father in much the same way that his leather chair was a good chair. She never got her father, really. He seemed blank and lifeless to her. Her brother got her father, like he got the chair, before she arrived. She remembers the two of them, father and son, talking about man things, dry and lifeless things, things that just didn't suit her taste, coffee things. She cannot remember ever talking to her father. She cannot remember ever playing with him. She cannot remember ever sitting, like coffee, on his knee. Whenever she smells coffee she thinks about these things. She thinks about her father.

Everything means something different to everyone. This is not, maybe, an exaggeration. Nothing means the same thing to any two people. "It's an overstatement," you'll say. "It goes too far." Maybe to you it does.

Hello, friends. Do you drink coffee? Why or why not? I drink it because it is the world. How about you?

Love.