Pepper in My Coffee

-->

Look what the Dirty-Dish Fairy brought me

It’s sunny and cold this morning. Sunflower seeds dangle off the deck in a feeder that’s supposed to be squirrel-proof but isn’t quite.  One cardinal and a group of chickadees peck at it with enough gusto to keep it turning like a carousel.

The dirty-dish fairy visited me in the night, as he often does now that my adult children have moved back home to live.  God bless their little cotton socks.

After my first dishwasher-load of the day, I’ve got my coffee and Pandora going.  Love me some Pandora.  It’s a Leon Redbone kind of day today.

Starr, aka, Lizzie Borden

The coffee is thick, black, sweet, and spicy, just the way I like it, and I’m having it in the company of Scout and Starr, my daily household companions.  I’m the only coffee drinker in the house.

Scout the Wonder Dog

My best coffee companion was my mother.  She taught me to like it by the time I turned three.  Yes.  I guess now that would raise some eyebrows.  But I don’t think it’s done me any harm and it’s certainly brought me many happy memories of time with Mama.

Of course she didn’t just pour me a big, hot mug of Red Diamond and tell me to have at it.  No. 

In the mornings, in the farmhouse we lived in when I was tiny, our family started the day with a cooked breakfast—eggs, sausage, biscuits, jelly or preserves—and there was a great bustle as my brother and sisters ate and ran for the county bus that took them to the local high school. My father would have been out and gone for some time by then.

That left just Mama and me.  When the door slammed behind the last departing teenager, Mama tidied the table and sank the dishes into the sudsy pan. Then she got a cup and saucer out of the cupboard and poured a thimbleful of coffee in, filling the rest of the space with milk.  She brought it to me with a spoon and a warning to, “blow on it a bit before you drink it, baby, it’s still a little hot.”

If I close my eyes, I can still see how slim her hands and arms were then, and graceful. How the giving loosened her normally composed expression into the play of a smile around her lips and eyes.

After she poured herself another cup, thick and sweet and black, she sat down next to my high chair, admonishing me to eat “just another tee-niney bite more,” or asking me if I remembered to put on my underwear that morning. 

Yes, I was that young. Sometimes I forgot.  Besides, I hated underwear.  Also socks. And shoes.

But I loved, LOVED, my Mama.  And I felt like I shared the Queenship of the World with her when she sat that little cup and saucer next to my plate.

To this day, my favorite coffee is percolated.  But most days, being as I’m brewing for only myself, I use a French-press.  I sprinkle a little bit of cinnamon on the grind, and in winter I mill a good bit of black pepper on top before adding the water.

Nothing is as warming in the winter as peppered coffee.  Except for mother-love.

Still hates underwear

Good day to you. Thanks for coming.  Come again soon.


      Leann