Sunday morning coffee trial

I awoke to the aroma of coffee this morning. Since I don’t drink coffee, I believe it was just nostalgia’s way of drifting through my subconscious, reminding me of the Sunday mornings of my early childhood, with my mother demanding at least two cups before anyone uttered a peep and a fog of my father’s Old Spice wafting from the bathroom as he stepped out, straightening his church tie.

Tugged by the memories, I trudged down the stairs like the anti-morning person that I am and shuffled to the kitchen.

Now, I’m not a coffee person. Never have been. Which is almost sacrilegious to say in my family. I come from a long line of hardcore caffeinators. My paternal grandmother kept a coffee pot brewing from dawn to dusk. Until recently, my dad would drink a cup of dark roast around 10 p.m. to “help” him sleep. But that trait skipped me entirely. My boys, however, seem to have inherited a love for the black bean, so I keep some grounds on hand for when they come to visit.

Using “Henry’s Blend” (purchased years ago because it was my grandfather’s name), I brewed a cup of (likely stale) coffee just to have the scent of it in the house. Then I made my usual chai. While it steeped, I carried the steaming coffee cup around the house like a priest bearing a thurible of incense.

Once the house was sanctified (or Sanka-tified?), I drank my lovely chai. But, when I finished, I still had that cup of coffee staring at me.

“Try it,” a dormant thread of my DNA seemed to whisper. “You’ll like it.”

Skeptical, I picked up the cup and took a teeny tiny sip. Then I promptly grimaced, grabbing a paper towel to scrape the offending sludge from my tongue. But feeling the pressure of disappointing a multitude of ancestors, I tried adding sugar. Then a little more sugar (brown this time), along with a hefty sploosh of milk.

And… it wasn’t terrible. I’m no convert by any means but I survived the Great Coffee Trial of 2025.

However, I’ve now consumed enough caffeine that NASA could use me as the first human hamster wheel powered rocket. So if you see something streak across the sky, just give me a wave and hope that I land somewhere near my laptop so I can get back to writing.

Tomorrow, the coffee stays in the cupboard.

Wishing you a lovely Sunday,

Viv