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Drinking Coffee While Watching Lions
Everything evolves or dies. Including coffee.
Lions and coffee.
Walking up the stairs to my dad’s office, it’s what I knew I’d find.
Few took the stairs at the back of the church. A door behind the pulpit led to a slender hall, cutting past the kitchen where communion was prepared (and where as a kid I’d chow down on the body of Christ when nobody was watching). The hall gave way to stairs, curling around the baptismal — which was little more than a bathtub elevated above the congregation — and led to a small office at the top of the church.
A shelf of books stood guard next to the open office door. From the top shelf, a small yellow flag, with a decorative red border surrounding a red lion standing on hind legs. The Lion Rampant. A flag for the Scottish monarchy. A reminder, should my dad ever forget, that the Ferguson family lineage connected him with royalty. At least that’s what he liked to say.
Passing under the fighting lion, I’d find my dad, sitting in an ancient wooden chair likely older than the Scottish monarch he claimed to be a part of. Despite the padded carpeting, he would have heard me climbing the stairs, which gave him time to turn away from penning sermons and tweaking coursework for the university classes he taught.
