Cold Like Coffee

Most days when I came home from school growing up, there was a cold cup of coffee on my dresser.

She took it black. She told me that when she was a young pastor’s wife, she learned to drink her coffee black so no one would feel bad if they didn’t serve it the way she liked it. She loved to make people feel good about themselves. 

Most days, I would walk her coffee cup to the kitchen, grossed out by the smell of cold coffee. 

Folgers, in the red tin. (Are moms of young kids ever coffee snobs?)

As an adult, I teased her about it. Coming home from school to the smell of coffee in my room. Sometimes I would find them other places too. Her dresser. Our bathroom. The kitchen counter. What I never found was an empty cup next to the couch. Or next to her bed. Always half-drunk, abandoned in the hustle of getting everyone off to school and getting herself ready for work.

Today I walked into the living room in the afternoon and saw my own cold coffee there. Most times, my own cup is a half-drunk first cup of the day. Sometimes it’s the second cup, but there’s almost always a forgotten cup somewhere in our home. I almost never finish my coffee. My girls go to daycare clean and groomed, sometimes in French braids, sometimes in a “ponytail like Rapunzel.” Mine is usually twisted up in a clip.

What I see now that I didn’t see then is that maybe she would have liked to sit and drink her hot coffee. Like I would now. She would have liked to sit after we left and drink something hot, and read her Bible, and write in a journal. But she left when we did and went to work. 

I didn’t understand what half a cup of cold coffee represents. That your life is not your own anymore. That you’re choosing to fix hair or rush kids out the door on time. That you chose a few extra minutes of sleep over having quiet time to yourself. That your existence in the morning is not your own. Ever. 

I wish I could thank her now. And I wish I could tell her now I know it’s not just the coffee that’s left cold. I have journal entries that end halfway through a word. Blog drafts that trail off after the first paragraph. Scriptures that are highlighted and I don’t know why, I didn’t get a chance to make a note. Bigger things, like pursuing a graduate degree, learning new creative outlets, honing professional skills. Things I will get to consider again someday. Things I don’t get to do right now. So many things left half done, left because someone woke up or bumped their head or had something important to show me. More important than hot coffee or a finished thought in a journal. 

Someday I will have my time back. I’ll be able to get another degree if I want it, go to more conferences, write my thoughts down everyday. I’ll get to sit with my coffee while it’s still hot. My girls will do their own hair (or not), pack their own lunches, and they won’t need me when they bump their heads. Maybe on those days I’ll wish they needed me more, or maybe I’ll be glad for the freedom. 

In any case, for now, some things are cold. Like my coffee.