creating coffee

I am still trying to master the new Bunn coffee maker. (What happened to coffee pots?) I got the coffee a bit too weak this morning, partly because I was trying to avoid the overflow problem of yesterday and partly because I was getting low on coffee in the canister. I did figure out--duh!--that a cup is not a cup. When the coffee maker instructions refer to a cup, they mean 5 ounces of water, not the 8 ounces of water I was pouring in. No wonder I had an overflow problem! Question to the powers that be: NO ONE drinks a 5-ounce cup of coffee anymore. We all have these gigantic mugs that hold 12-20 ounces. (For some people, that means room on top for frothy whipped topping and cinnamon sprinkles, but not for purists like me.)

Coincidentally, today's "Arlo and Janis" cartoon represents how I feel. I can't think, taste, smell, or see until I have my coffee. And I like to sip in silence, thank you very much. I'll get talkative later, but until a few energizing and mind-clearing mouthfuls have gone down, I'm not worth the bullet it would take to shoot me. (Another of Mama's sayings.)

I've been using a lot of Mama's words lately, but oddly, it's Daddy I'm still dreaming about. I'm even dreaming about my father-in-law. I don't know why I'm focused on the family fathers lately. On the phone yesterday my niece Melissa went on and on about how much her mother (my sister Sheila) was like Mamaw (what the grandkids called my mother). "She sits the same way, she puts her coffee cup and ashtray on the table in front of her the same way...." I cringed when Melissa said that, since I could hear her inhaling on her own cigarette. She's in her early 30s. My sister Sheila is not quite two years younger than I am, but she looks ten years older.

That's one of the reasons I could not go home again. For decades I've tried changing my family, which is probably a stupid and fruitless task to begin with. I've encouraged them to have better health habits (don't smoke, don't fry everything, don't serve sweets with every meal, take better care of your teeth). Half of them are nurses, and they know better, but they still smoke, they still have slabs of frosted cake for breakfast, and I doubt a one of them has ever flossed. (No surprise that Sheila is having full dentures made soon.) I've tried even harder to get them to educate themselves, but their idea of a good education is being trained in some practical vocation. That's where it begins and ends. They don't understand me, and they don't appreciate who I am and what I do. It hurts to know that I've educated myself out of my own family (well, my brothers and sisters and nieces and nephews). Yet for the survival of my own--what do I call it?!!--soul? mind? consciousness?--I have had to pursue the path of higher education. For the most part, living as far from them as I do, I can ignore the emotional and mental gap between me and my siblings, but if I had taken that job in Louisiana, I would have wound up insane. The old Big Sister Will Fix Everything syndrome would have seized me, and I would have literally killed myself trying to make their lives better, to no avail. I would not have raised them up, as the beautiful song made popular by Josh Groban goes. They would have drug me down. It's like I see them all drowning in quicksand, and the only thing I can do is watch and throw the occasional rope to them. If I got closer, I'd be as deeply sunk as they are.

When I was a child and a teenager, Mama used to sing these mournful, hopeless country songs, ones that reflected immoral and out-of-control behaviors (cheating, a la "Your Cheatin' Heart," drinking, smoking, jealous rages and murder). Emotionally, I'd feel like running, crawling, escaping, moving as far away as I could, as fast as I could. It was more than revulsion--it was fear, fear that if I didn't get away, that would be my future, too. Even thinking about it, I almost lose my breath, as if my lungs are shrinking and contracting down into the pit of my stomach.

I've spent a lifetime trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, the good parts of my parents from the bad. Both of them had so many good qualities--storytelling, humor, love of animals. I try to keep that part alive. But for the sake of my own survival, I have to lose the bad part, the all-or-nothing behavior, the hand-to-mouth mentality. I don't regret learning to love drinking coffee as a six-week-old baby, when my mother's father spoonfed me coffee (sweetened with sugar and cream). But I regret so much else, both for my sake and that of my siblings. Mama and Daddy had no use for education beyond the basics--readin' and writin' and 'rithmatic. Their philosophies were homespun, more basic than their educations. Alas, the same is true for most of my family. And I have to accept that they won't change, just as I have to accept myself for the path I've chosen, even though the boulders of guilt that block this path have often tripped me.

How the heck did I go from coffee to family guilt? Ah. Coffee was always a part of every family gathering. Drinking coffee is what we did together that united us. No wonder I remain in search for the perfect coffee maker. Dr. S.