Coffee. Or, What Is Love?

When I met Matthew, he detested coffee, and he really wanted nothing to do with it. He was (gasp! barf! eek!) one of those people who liked to drink soda in the morning, which is something I will never be able to understand. Before I kidnapped him and made him live with me, he lived with his twin brother, and together they would plow through obscene amounts of soda, never once stopping to think about coffee. (Or water. Or vodka. You know, the liquids that matter.)

I tried for years to bring him over to the other side, to show him the solid, unflinching love that coffee has to offer. I tried not to complain, I tried to be strong. I told myself to relax. Figure it out. I could drink coffee alone in the mornings! I didn't need a coffee companion! He was good for lots of other things, like carrying heavy stuff, eating strange things that I cooked, making sure I didn't get hit by cars, and happily watching musicals. But...still. When I met him, I was just out of college, where I spent 99.2% of my time drinking coffee. With people. I couldn't just magically turn myself into a solo coffee drinker. I was lost. I needed a plan.

The years passed. We'd go out to breakfast, and I'd have my coffee. He would drink juice. Sometimes he would pick up a coffee for me in the morning and bring it back to me. He learned how to tolerate the smell of coffee, and once even declared that he was starting to like the smell of it. He learned how I liked it -- two spoons of sugar, and diluted with cream to make it the color of a camel. I brought a coffeemaker over to his house, and I could finally at least pretend that he was a coffee drinker like me. See! A coffeepot on the counter! This must be a coffee-drinking household!

I'm honestly not sure what the big deal was. I could embrace all (well, most of) the ways we were different. It was interesting to see the ways he created messes, the kinds of books he treasured, the ways he loved other people, and the kinds of ideas he collected in his head. I mean, hell -- he was an accomplished, unflagging meat-eater in my very vegan world during the first several years of our relationship. This wasn't something that bothered me in the least, and yet I somehow just couldn't get over the coffee thing.

Coffee marked the beginning of every day for me, and it felt as crucial as the rising of the sun. I had had some of the most profound conversations of my life over coffee. I had figured out the answers to massive problems over coffee. I linked coffee drinking to accomplishment, I think, and (thanks to, uh, probably Folgers commercials) I had so many images in my head of happy-family-morning-coffee-time, so many coffee-scene movie clips in my head. And it didn't help that the other half of my previous relationship also refused to drink coffee. A psychotically avid cyclist, he claimed coffee would ruin his physique. (Or something like that. Everything he said was so absurd that I stopped listening after awhile.)

I asked Matthew why he didn't like coffee. His answer: it doesn't taste good. Hmm. This was not an acceptable answer. I eventually got a little more information out of him, and learned that the only coffee he had ever experienced was the cheap, pre-ground stuff and served strong and black. His parents would drink it like this, and he tasted it once. He recalls it as impossibly bitter and horrid. I could not argue with this. Cheap coffee tastes like, well, cheap coffee. It is awful. It shouldn't be consumed by humans. It was a terrible first impression. But scary coffee has some remarkably civilized sisters and brothers out there who could make a convert out of him. I knew it. Armed with this knowledge, I began to formulate my plan. I would change his mind about coffee. I would show him how impossibly perfect coffee could be. 

The remaining details of the road-to-coffee perdition journey are surprisingly hazy, probably because the moment I keep in the forefront of my memory is the one in which Matthew decided he did indeed like coffee. And! And! And! He liked it just how I liked it! He liked it so much that he started having it together some mornings, and eventually it was every morning, and then, the next thing we both knew, he couldn't possibly think of starting the day without it. He became interested in trying different kinds of coffee beans and he began to see the value in grinding them fresh every morning. He experimented with different kinds and brands of milk, cream, and half & half. He started to care about the vessel it was served in, and the temperature it was when he started drinking it. I had created a monster, and I was very, very happy.

Several years ago, I went to one of those paint-it-yourself ceramics studios and designed a special, huge coffee mug, since he had become obsessed with serving coffee to himself in the largest vessel he could find. That was back in 2008, and he used it every single day, which, yes, melted my determined little coffee-lovin' heart. It became such a required part of his day that it was sort of like a kid's security blanket -- you tried to offer him a different stuffed bunny when his regular stuffed bunny was in the wash, and you were received with disbelief, perhaps a glare, and then complete refusal.

I'm not sure how the coffee production got so serious around here, but I started to really like it. I liked hearing him whoop for joy when the coffeepot gave out its three beeps that signified the end of the brewing time. I loved the coffee songs and dances that we created while either in extreme coffee withdrawal or extreme coffee high. Then came the advent of the milk-frother. You know, the whipper. Showing him this toy of mine was like showing a dog a flank steak. There wasn't a part where I was like, here's this cool thing I have, wanna see it and then shortly after, I put it away. No, no, no -- it was here's this cool thing I have, and then his eyes lit up, he cautiously took it from me, and then he never stopped playing with it. Stiff peaks of frothy milk became every morning's goal. I woke up to incredible cups of coffee, and we laughed wildly anytime we talked about the terrible days long, long ago, when coffee wasn't a crucial part, the shining beacon, of our life together. Things were really making sense.

A few years ago, when I switched to decaf (as part of an experiment), I know his heart sank. We went from coffee twins to coffee strangers, which meant different pots of coffee every morning. Not only did this mean more dishes to wash, it meant total disconnect! How on earth can you bond with someone when you're drinking two different kinds of COFFEE, for crying out loud? It's impossible, clearly. I eventually switched to half-caf, which is still my coffee to date, but it was never the same. He would shriek in fake horror as I threatened to pour decaf or half-caf into his mug, and together, we laughed our way out of our differences, which is, as you know, pretty serious business within the confines of a relationship.

So. Differences. Ah! Differences. I've been wanting to tell this story for awhile now, but it hasn't felt right. When Matthew and I split up at the beginning of May, I had already started writing about the coffee, and the story that you just read sat silently, gathering all sorts of digital-dust, and I couldn't figure out what to do with it all. Here's the thing that you really should know, though. When he moved out, it was a process that took several weeks. During that time, we crossed paths as little as possible. The kitchen didn't see me really at all, because how do you cook for a broken heart? The only thing either of us used the kitchen for was...you guessed it. Coffee. I was devastated and confused about everything I thought I knew about our relationship, but coffee, that magical siren, held us together in a way that saved me from going completely insane. Oh, coffee. You saved me!

For days, I'd come home to a house that was little more packed up than the day before, and it was the most gut-wrenching, miserable thing to watch. Packing stirred up dust in every room, which made me want to scream. Everything, physical and emotional and mental, was a complete and utter mess. But. But I would also come home to my washed-out espresso pot, drying in the rack. He would wash my coffee pot, you see, without washing his own. I would see my clean pot, and, amid the waves of fury, I would be able to see a flicker of the love I had for him, and that was the thing that propelled me through the sheets and sheets of anger that coursed through my veins during the days of dividing our things and shifting our dreams. In exchange, I would wash his coffee pot for him. It was silent, this exchange. It went on like this for several weeks, until he was completely moved out, along with the beeping coffee pot, his blue mug, and the milk frother. I was starting over. Ten years later, I was beginning again. It was just me, my espresso pot, some half-caf, and a carved-out heart. I could handle it. I did handle it.

Which brings us to, well, today. It's nearly September, and I swoon when I taste autumn in the morning air. Coffee is still the liquid love in my world, as you might imagine. Months are between Matthew and I, and each new day, each inch of space, holds me up a little more. I am different now, but I am good. I've learned a lot, I've moved back into the kitchen, I'm thinking a whole lot about you, dear reader, and I am, if you can believe it, involved with someone new. He (insert laughter here) wants very little to do with coffee because, well, he's way too busy drinking milk. Milk! What on earth?! It's so incredibly charming that I can't possibly feel concerned about shadows being cast on the coffee around here. Basically, I'm planning on not forcing this one. Not this time. If there's anything I have learned this summer, it's that you must certainly stop forcing it. That, and you must always, always hold yourself up.

And coffee? Well, coffee wants to help. Coffee is a very good holder-upper. Coffee, well, that's what love is.