#386: The Copper Coffee Pot
Waiting for the coffee to brew
Advent, the time just passed, is a time for waiting. We know it best from advent calendars, opening a little window each day of December to reveal a picture, or a chocolate, or both. We wait again on New Year’s Eve, counting down the hours, then the minutes, then the seconds. Is there any other night where you so consciously notice the minutes passing, and the sudden rush to find the right channel for the countdown? We do not want to miss that moment we have waited so long for.
I have been doing another type of waiting this holiday, a waiting which happens to have taken place in the time between Christmas and New Year’s, although it has continued into the new 2022: I am waiting for my copper coffee pot to boil and brew. It is not really my pot, but my mother’s, given to her by her mother. I can see it becoming a family heirloom — as is the act of waiting for coffee to boil, brew, and settle.
In the early days of this blog, I wrote a post about sundials, a post which was inspired by the sundial in my grandparents’ yard, but also by the act of waiting for coffee to brew in the only pot we had to hand at the time: a percolator without the percolating part. Like my mother’s copper pot above, it was just a jug, so for us to have a cup of coffee without grounds of coffee floating in it, time was, and is, needed to boil it up and then let it settle down. Once brewed, I pour coffee carefully from the jug, a gentle motion which leaves the grounds at the bottom while the strong black coffee flows into the cup.
This is ‘cowboy coffee’ in our house, coffee which requires time, and watchful but patient waiting. So while my coffee was brewing one morning, I sat down near the kitchen and wrote the first draft of this blog post — waiting for my coffee with ears pricked for the sound of boiling, but using the time to consider other things.
In other words, I have been participating in active waiting: a time of preparation and anticipation, not a listless sense of lost or wasted time. Each day for the last week I have enjoyed waking up, pottering downstairs, and putting on my coffee to brew. And each time I have savoured the waiting. Sometimes I write, or chat, or other times I just sit and think. Being in my childhood home for the holidays brings back many memories, layering on top of each other, as I think about the person I used to be, the person I am now, and the person I might be in the future. Just as this blog post written in 2021 overlays my earlier Object post written in 2016, memories layer up in my mind’s eye as I sit, wait, and think about time passing.
A new year has dawned, and I am actively marking it in my mind, as I am also actively marking each day in my mind, acknowledging the good and the bad and not letting it simply pass me by. I have been inspired by Paula Gooder’s The Meaning is in the Waiting: The Spirit of Advent, but now that advent has passed and the new year begins, I am asking myself how I can keep that sense of meaning in my waiting. I sit surrounded by childhood memories and thoughts for the future, and wonder: how can I wait for things to come like I wait for my coffee to brew?
