I am drinking a cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain from Starbucks while I write this, but I am not at all a coffee snob. I will drink coffee from a gas station or from Stumptown. I will drink it black or drowning in half and half and covered in whipped cream. Coffee is in many ways a kind of religion for me, as it is for many people. This is a dramatic retelling of my first taste.
I wanted it because I couldn’t have it. It was a tradition bestowed upon me at a young age. After every Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, my Nana would ask the assembled adults if they would like a cup of coffee with dessert. Being nine years old, dessert was one of my favorite topics. It was the highlight of the meal. Holiday dinners in my mother’s family worked like this; one family unit hosted the dinner and made the turkey or chicken and accompanying side dishes, while the other family members brought the dessert.
My first time happened on my own turf, in my family’s dining room. It was Thanksgiving, 1999. The guests arrived at 3:00pm, my Nana and uncles carrying boxes of cookies and chocolates, my aunt with her homemade desserts, which could be anything from pumpkin creme brulee to handmade cannolis to lovingly baked pies. Dinner didn’t start until 5:00pm, so we munched on cut vegetables and a cheese plate while my mom kept a watchful eye on the turkey in the oven and finished up the cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes on the stove top.
After dinner my brother and I helped clear the plates, not in a gesture of maturity or goodwill but to speed up the process of dessert happening sooner. The plates would be stacked beside the sink where one of the adults would scrape the remains into the garbage, rinse each one, and place them into the dishwasher.
In the meantime my mother would take out a fresh bag of coffee beans and shake them into the electric grinder, filling the room with staccato bursts of its whirring blades. Then she would pour the grounds into the coffee pot’s crisp white filter, grounds that resembled crushed Oreo cookies but smelled entirely different, earthy and sharp, hinted with spices. I already loved the smell of brewed coffee and how it made the kitchen suddenly feel warmer and cozier. I dutifully lined up the cookies on a china platter and helped unwrap the pies that my aunt had brought, lingering afterwards. I wanted to be where the action was.
Nana briefly returned to the dining room and gathered the sleepy adults’ attention, taking orders for coffee, with or without cream and sugar. This was before soy or almond milk, we just had the good old stuff, half and half and skim milk. She came back a moment later and told my mom how many cups we needed. My mom counted out the ceramic mugs and then took up the coffee pot, pouring the amber liquid into each cup as I watched it swirl and darken.
I must’ve pleaded with my mom incessantly that night between clearing the plates and sitting down for dessert before she finally agreed to letting me have a cup. In the years before, the answer had always been a resounding no, so I was a little surprised and even scared when she said yes. She poured just a little bit of coffee into a mug and handed it to me and then, to my great disappointment, poured another cup for my brother. He was two years younger than me and in my opinion, did not deserve to be indulged in the mysteries of coffee yet.
She then dashed a bit of milk into our cups and a scoop of sugar. I look back on this with horror as an adult, to think that my first taste of coffee was not pure, but tainted with sweetness. I digress, it didn’t matter at the time. I was so happy that I was finally allowed into the coffee-and-dessert club with the adults, who I viewed as peers, that I felt smug and pleased with the outcome.
There was trepidation before the first sip, and for a second I feared that drinking the coffee would change me. But I was too curious so I soldiered on. I took a sip. And then another. It tasted bitter, even with the cream and sugar. It had the consistency of tea with milk, but with a bolder flavor. Tea, this was not. Tea was weak compared to this. I drank the rest of my cup, feeling it come to rest in my belly with a comforting heaviness. My tongue was skimmed with bitterness, and a touch of sourness from the acidity, but I was happy. I ate a few cookies, two slivers of pie, in order to taste both the pumpkin pie and the pecan, and called it a night.
As I grew older, my interest in coffee waxed and waned. I loved the taste with cream and sugar, and hated its bitterness. With each passing year I came to appreciate coffee more and more, and even prefer it black. And as my relationship with coffee matured and fluctuated, it went from a treat, to a necessity and a vice, and back to a treat again. But I’ll never forget my first cup, greedily drinking it down to its speckled dregs. When it’s cold out, I crave a good cup of coffee, and the feeling it gives me; that feeling of closeness and warmth. It feels like coming home.
