Friday, October 20, 2006

Gentle Bitterness: A writing revisited

Michael has been bugging me for months to get all of our paperwork filed away (instead of neatly stacked on the desk) so we can talk to some guy about how we have no money (OK, not quite like that, but you know...). Anyway, I organized it all tonight and also stumbled across some lovely old photos and drawings and writings, and I felt compelled to revise/update something I wrote over five years ago. OK, so here it is:





Gentle Bitterness

I can never finish a cup of coffee. It's not that I don't like the way it tastes or that I get bored of it. It's the pacing. I start with short, quick sips. It's hot at first, and it only takes once - well, maybe twice - before you're extra careful. Then there's usually either some sort of conversation occurring between another party, or else a good book, magazine, or other distraction. The coffee is soon forgotten. Once remembered, the liquid has cooled, and the beverage has lost its main purpose - to warm the body, and (in a way) the soul. What you're left with is nothing but a half a cup of cold bitterness, one of the most undesirable things at a moment when all you want is something warm and gentle.

Although not everyone is fond of coffee, it seems to play an important role in many peoples' lives, adapting its purpose as the respective person grows, ages and learns. As a young child, coffee was an intriguing distraction. It kept my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles at the dinner table long after the dishes had been cleared. My headstands, twirls, and acrobatics were no match for those creamy white mugs of black bitter conversation. 'What could be more exciting than me?' I'd often wonder as I walked on my hands, back and forth across that olive-green shag carpet. I found myself willing to play the coffee game in exchange for some adult attention. Straightening myself out and speaking in the most adult-like way possible, I finally asked for a taste of "that." It only took one asking, for the next few years I was presented with my very own mug of coffee. It was really a mug of milk with about two tablespoons of coffee, but it was mine. And so I found myself at the dinner table those long hours sometimes listening, but often sleeping, as the adults shared their stories of "so and so" getting married, how "he" wasn't Jewish, or how "she" lost her job.

In Junior High the only acceptable coffee drink was an iced-mocha from Gloria Jean's. We'd pile it up with so much whipped cream, sugar, cinnamon, and chocolate shavings that you really couldn't call it coffee. At age thirteen we bustled around the mall feeling totally independent with babysitting money in our pockets and grown-up drinks in our hands. Once, finding ourselves without motorized transportation, my friend Jessica and I thought we could make our own iced-mochas. We poured some of my parents' leftover coffee into two mugs. It was cold already, but we decided to add some ice to it anyway, just to be sure. Then we proceeded to add milk, cinnamon, granulated sugar, and Nestle Quik (my kitchen wasn't equipped with chocolate shavings). As you might imagine, it was disgusting. It wasn't anything like Gloria Jean's. It tasted like, well, like coffee! Yuck. Soon after the iced-mocha craze, someone told us that coffee would stunt our growth. We four-foot-seven'ers decided to put down the coffee-flavored chocolate for a while.

Maybe it was the "Central Perk" Friends explosion (who knows) but coffeeshops quickly became the meeting place in high school. They weren't chosen as great hangouts because of all the fabulous Bay Area coffee. No way. In fact, at first the drink of choice was the Italian soda. Fruity or creamy, they were fizzy and fun, and a speciality of our favorite coffeeshop. As the weather grew colder, I had to drink something warmer. Hot chocolate was OK at first, but soon I started trying drinks like white chocolate mochas and a fabulous concoction called an "Irish Storm" (my five-foot-five status a more secure place to be). These drinks were warm, tasty, and they were coffee. They were also expensive. There were no refills on four dollar drinks, hence marking the importance of the coffee stirrer. There had to be a reason to stay for hours at a time, and those long red coffee stirrers worked as a substitute drink and helped me rationalize obscene loitering. An accomplished coffee stirrer chewer would chew at the straw until the plastic was soft, flexible and could fit entirely in the mouth. Only then could you begin your tricks, tying the stirrer in knots the way people often do with cherry stems. It was something to do, and it didn't cost any extra money. Toward the end of high school, we developed more ethics and less cash flow. This turn of events led me to the purchase of the one dollar cup of coffee with the twenty-five cent refill. I couldn't rationalize sitting there for hours on end, taking up valuable customer space, chewing on a coffee stirrer. Nor could I afford those four dollar drinks - I needed that extra money for college coffee. And I think one day I just started to like the taste of coffee. No sugar, no sweet-and-low. Just non-fat milk.

Surprisingly, coffee played a very small role in my college life. I wasn't up until all hours of the night writing papers and tossing back cups of caffeine to stay awake. Somehow my friends and I found the energy and stamina to get through long lengths of time with joyful ease . . . Sugar may have played a role. If we did partake in a coffee, it was an outing, and there were no loyalties to one shop or another.

Today (oh my), today coffee is almost a daily need. I'm not like my grandmother who walks into walls and is more incoherent than usual before she has her cup of coffee in the morning. But hey, I like that warm cup of liquid sunshine, this time sweetened and doused with cream. Still, I never do finish an entire cup of coffee. You see, it has to do with the pacing . . .

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Nuggets and "Pup"cakes

Have you ever banged a frozen chicken nugget on a granite countertop to prove a point? I have.
A few days ago my children requested chicken nuggets for dinner, so I plugged in our handy dandy pizza pizzaz-thing-a-ma-bobber (it's a pizza cooker, but we use it for anything that is frozen that you are supposed to put in the oven). This action was greeted with a loud cry of disapproval, "No Mommy! No Mommy! No cook it!"


"Kyle, I have to cook the chicken nuggets for you."


"No Mommy, I eat it cold."


"Kyle, they're frozen, you can't eat them like this. I need to cook them."


"No Mommy!! I no like it hot. I eat it cold."


It was at this point that I took a chicken nugget and started banging it on the counter, trying to show Kyle that the nugget was frozen and, really, inedible. He was amused by this, and was then distracted by his brother and the dog.


My kids must be a little confused. I make things really hot, and then we have to wait for them to cool off, or I have a little trick of putting the hot plate of food in the freezer for a minute or so . . . . Ahh, the freezer. And there you go!


Later that evening, I noticed the bananas were looking, well, a little ripe, so I decided to whip up some banana muffins (which Dylan called "pupcakes").


"Mommy, what you doing?"


"I'm making banana muffins."


"Banana muffins like pupcakes?"


"Yes, they're like cupcakes."


"Mommy, I eat them now."


"Dylan, no you have to wait until they're cooked. I'm making them."


"No Mommy, I eat them now."


So, I show him my mixing bowl full of batter.


"Mommy's making them?"

"Yes, go to your playroom and I'll tell you when they're done."


I know my children are constantly learning new things, and it's easy to forget that there are just so many new concepts they experience every day. It's nice to get a chuckle every now and then when certain concepts are skewed . . . For example, right now if something is "broken," Dylan thinks it just "needs batteries." Or if I tell them we're going to the store (and this can be any store), he thinks we're going to "get ice-cream," because a week ago I took him to the grocery store to buy ice-cream.


We probably should go out and buy ice-cream more often.