I am a descendant from a long line of coffee drinkers – a link in a chain that passes through me from my grandparents and parents to my progeny.
Don Jesus, my maternal grandfather arrived at the breakfast table each morning where his place, at the head of the table, was set with two cups and two saucers. One held a half cup of freshly brewed coffee, and the other, a half cup of fresh milk. He sat down in his place and took a cup in each hand. He carefully poured one into the other, and then raised the full cup a foot above its empty partner to pour it again, as if it were a waterfall, into the empty cup. When the cascade was done, he reversed the roles of the cups, and he repeated the process. This process continued as he raised the full cup higher at each stage so that the receiving cup became frothier with each transfer of cafe-au-lait from full to empty cup.
My grandmother witnessed this spectacle each morning with obvious disapproval – although with greater indulgence than she showed him when he fed the household dog and cat under the dining table; he indulged them both. Don Jesus usually made a mess with his coffee waterfalls.
In the background, my mother served me coffee – mostly milk with a dash of the addictive brew each morning. She must have understood that my connection to my grandfather had to be facilitated with this social brew. At the age of four, I found the coffee that she prepared for me pleasing. Unlike Don Jesus, who loved café con leche, I ultimately became an aficionado of black coffee.
When I was a college junior at age seventeen, my computer programming mentor, Jack Rudolph (RIP), demonstrated to me that one could smell sugar in black coffee. It’s true; even a minuscule amount of sugar in black coffee confers a distinct odor that anyone can learn to discern. That’s when I began to take my coffee black with just a grain of sugar. Susan knows this well. For the decades that we have spent together, she has prepared my coffee with just a few grains of sugar – not a teaspoon or the tip of a teaspoon, but a few grains. How much is that? A restaurant package of “Raw Sugar” provides enough sweeter for a week or two of my black coffee. Can I tell the difference between black coffee and black coffee with a few grains of sugar? Hell yes!
I swallow my morning medicines – each with a swig of black coffee doctored with just a few grains of sugar.