Some of my earliest memories of my father involve working on our model railroad in the basement of my childhood home; often, in those early days, he would be puffing away on a pipe as he considered the next phase in construction, only pausing long enough to reach for the omnipresent mug of coffee he’d carried down from the kitchen. The twin smells of the Borkem Riff and Dunkin’ Donuts used to fill the space, background set pieces that will forever be linked with cork roadbed, solder and plywood whenever I think of my father.
Later, after Dad gave up smoking, the coffee mugs remained — and often multiplied; as has happened to me on more than one occasion, he would set a mug down in one part of the workshop and lose track of it, only to find it immediately after returning with a second, fresh mugful of coffee. Before college, I would generally join him with a hot cocoa or nothing at all; after college, though, and the long nights of studying that required, I returned home with my own caffeine addiction. I have fond memories of two mugs sitting side-by-side on the layout during those first years after college; even now, when I head back East for my annual visit, we continue the practice, though for both of us, and for various health reasons, the quantity of coffee is markedly reduced these days.
I’d never understood until about a decade ago how my father could drink his straight; I started off with more sugar and cream than coffee back in college, but that was mostly due to the poor quality of the actual coffee I was drinking at the time. I wouldn’t say I became a connoisseur, but over the years, I began to gravitate toward better beans and better blends, getting to the point where I, too, hardly ever put anything into my coffee now. I told a friend of mine that, and he laughed; he’d had a similar epiphany as a graduate student, though it may have had more to do with his lack of funds to purchase sugar.
I won’t entirely admit that Sean got his love of coffee from the author, but the evidence is pretty clear. Hopefully, though, he will listen to Suzanne and cut back a bit on the quantity; I, too, am starting to fear for what it might be doing to him…