Good morning Reader,
Yesterday morning at about 6:15, I was sitting in our family room reading while Gail was in the kitchen making herself a cup of coffee. Our son and daughter gave her one of those fancy coffee machines a year or two ago, and she loves the thing. She had never really been much of a coffee drinker before, but now there is this whole little process to it. From where I was sitting, I could hear the machine grinding the beans, the milk foaming, the coffee pouring into the cup. There is almost an art to it.
For some reason, hearing all of that sent my mind straight to my mom and the Folgers Instant coffee she used to drink. I could see the container almost perfectly. The label. The red lid. I could see her putting a spoonful or two into a cup of hot water and stirring it around, and I can even remember that little white cloud forming across the top before the coffee dissolved. It's funny what the mind holds onto. I couldn't tell you what Mom was wearing on any particular morning or what we talked about. Most of those mornings from my childhood are a blur. But I can see that Folgers container, that spoon, and that cup of coffee.
Something else made the memory feel particularly vivid yesterday. Gail was standing at a kitchen counter only eleven houses away from the house where I grew up. So in my mind I had these two women, separated by more than fifty years, standing in kitchens in the same neighborhood making themselves coffee. Gail was taking her time, grinding and foaming and creating this little work of morning art. My memory of Mom, on the other hand, is that she was always in motion. There were six of us kids.
Did my mom have a morning that was hers?
I don't know. She very well may have. I certainly wasn't paying attention to things like that when I was eight or ten years old. But I don't remember seeing her sit down to enjoy that cup of Folgers. My mind goes to movement. Six kids. Breakfast. School. Whatever else had to happen to get the Beveridge household up and moving and into the day.
So I asked Gail a question. "Do you think life was more chaotic in the 1970s or today?" I thought I knew where she would go with it. Today, obviously. Look around. Our phones follow us everywhere. Work can reach us at any hour. News from every corner of the planet is in our pocket. We know about wars, politics, markets, tragedies, and whatever else is unfolding practically as it happens.
But Gail didn't answer immediately. She thought for a second and then said something along the lines of, "Well, your mom had to get six kids ready for school. Your mom had to get the day going. Your mom had to have breakfast ready."
That caught me off guard because I had been thinking about the chaos outside the house. Gail brought the thought back inside it.
Maybe the world was quieter then. There is no doubt that the velocity and volume of what comes at us today are different. But that doesn't necessarily mean my mother's mornings were quieter. It made me wonder whether every generation has lived inside its own version of this tension, with circumstances, responsibilities, people, and expectations continually pulling at us, even if the nature of those pulls has changed.
There is the chaos of the wider world, of course, but then there is also the chaos of an ordinary life. The kid who can't find a shoe. The customer who needs an answer. The spouse who is frustrated with you. The aging parent you're worried you're not doing enough for. The late project. The workout you promised yourself you'd get in. The broken cabinet door, the water softener that needs salt, the laundry that has to get done. And then you get in the car, you move into your workday, the texts and emails begin arriving, and if you happen to glance at the news, the outside world comes flooding in as well.
Different levels of chaos, I suppose. Different currents pulling at us.
Which brought me back to the coffee.
Maybe what interests me about Gail's latte and my mother's Folgers isn't really the coffee at all. Maybe it is the possibility that's wrapped inside some of these seemingly insignificant rituals is a small moment in which the rest of life stops pulling. A moment of control. A moment of quiet. A moment of solitude. A moment of doing something for yourself before the demands of the day take over.
Maybe her Folgers served that purpose. Maybe there were mornings when she stood there with that cup and had thirty seconds that belonged to her. Or maybe she drank it while making six lunches and telling one of us for the third time to get moving because we were going to miss the bus. I don't know, and I don't want to reinterpret her life through the lens of mine.
Yesterday morning, listening to that machine grind and foam, I was reminded of how much I need these small moments.
And I think that is why my mind has stayed with the coffee. We can't control most of what is going to come at us today. The world is going to move. People are going to need us. Something won't go according to plan. Someone will disagree with us. There will be circumstances we wouldn't have chosen, demands we didn't schedule, and emotions we didn't invite.
But perhaps scattered throughout an ordinary life are these very small opportunities to come back to ourselves before the current carries us somewhere we never intended to go.
For Gail, there may be something in the ritual of grinding the beans, foaming the milk, and making that cup of coffee before the day gets moving.
And for my mom?
I hope she had something. Some little piece of the day that belonged to her before six kids, a husband, a home, and the rest of life began asking something of her.
I wonder what that is for me.
And what it is for you.