Coffee

Good Morning! Do I seem a little fixated on coffee? Yes, yes I do. Why? Well there's always a good story somewhere, after you've sorted through several uninspiring ones!

    The price of airline tickets for children leapt substantially at the age of 12, when I was a child. Thus, my frugal parents purchased individual tickets for each of their three children before the summer of our eleventh year. My fearless sister was the first to embark on the six week Norway adventure ALONE, I followed three years later. A vivid picture from my journey holds its place in my mind, like a tattered bookmark left in a favorite chapter. It is a memory so rich that if I breath in deeply, I can almost smell the coffee cooking in the worn kettle on the crackling fire, only three long strides from the icy stream. I can also almost smell the forest, moist with morning dew, as I stare at the wriggling trout, caught in an expert instant by my mother's uncle, who is ancient as the mountains, with callused hands and kind eyes. He spoke no English and I knew only the trill of foreign Norwegian words on the tip of my tongue, from the songs my mother would sing before meals or bed (I didn't learn Norwegian until I was seventeen). There were no words between us, but there was cool mountain air, sharp in my lungs and fresh on my breath. There were my uncle's steady wide steps leading me up to the special fishing spot, and the meal, caught, cleaned and cooked, just for me. And from his hand, there was the cup and the coffee shared, the smile on his deeply wrinkled face, and the love that spoke volumes between us in the middle of the forest, in the rugged Norwegian terrain. As in every tiny space on earth where two can meet in glance or embrace, love can be the unspoken beginning of the story. And sometimes the faint smell of coffee might be the fragrance of sweet memories fueling the moment.

Have a great day!