Coffee and Other Concerns at Mid-term

Today’s topic is coffee—the writer’s drink.

Coffee is the drink of the pro. It is a statement of a maturing taste, of a character learning to handle bitterness. These are, for writers, two important issues—taste and handling bitterness.

The initial move, for most, is to add sugar.

That’s what I did the first time I decided to have a cup. But that doesn’t take away from the enchanting first cup, my first cup. It just means that my lessons took a bit longer, delayed by my prolonged use of sugar. And milk.

But maybe it was having the first cup placed in front of me in the Big Boy restaurant, the jukebox going and the truckers sitting at the counter. Maybe it was following my friend’s lead and pouring in the cream from the metal container and then the three packets of sugar and stirring it with a spoon and savoring this new milky, slick independence, no longer candy, but not yet coffee. Maybe it was the night outside, hidden deeply behind the lights of the street, the song playing on our jukebox in early reggae, “I can see clearly now, the rain is gone.”

I was sixteen and Nixon, seeking a second term, was getting young men out of Viet Nam, so maybe it was the strong probability of coming back again the next Friday and having it again.

This was the spot, a place of transition, a space to move forward, to begin to see my own story and where it was headed.

Today, when I see my students cramming at mid-term, it's not that I'm insensitive. I've explained the way to avoid this. And they do have the writer's drink, after all. I remember with strange fondness all those short nights in college at mid-term, with instant coffee at three in the morning, getting on with papers, reading, and exams, just as I remember those first Friday nights of thinking about the future, of getting out and drinking three or four cups before mid-night. 

Today, when I sit at the computer and begin a morning’s work, the coffee is there, dark roast, no milk, no sugar. I drink it all morning, and I like the taste, and it doesn’t seem all that bitter—what I used to avoid and try to sweeten. And the story continues.