Edit 35:In Defense of My Morning Coffee
An ode. A love letter. A small, daily religion.
The house is quiet. Not the held-breath kind of quiet, but something soft and unhurried.
This is the hour I guard with something close to ferocity. Before the texts, before the to-do lists, before anyone needs anything from me, there is this. The kitchen light, still low. The particular silence of a house mid-sleep. And the coffee.
It is, I should tell you, not just any coffee. We are not speaking of whatever is convenient or whatever is on sale or whatever comes in a can with a mountain on the label. We are speaking of Royal Kona Coffee’s Vanilla Macadamia Nut—the one we discovered in Tokyo during the years we lived there, the one that became woven so deliciously and completely into the fabric of our mornings that when it came time to repatriate, the question wasn't only about the house or the school or the time zones. It was also, genuinely: but what about the coffee?
Thankfully, the universe (in one of its kinder gestures) provided a stateside source. We found someone who ships it. We did not ask too many questions. We simply subscribed to the arrangement and moved on with our lives, grateful and slightly pleased about it.
The ritual matters almost as much as the coffee itself. First: the evaporated milk, warmed until it's just barely steaming—not boiled, never boiled, we are not animals. Then the coffee, brewed and poured over it in a slow, deliberate stream that releases something faintly caramel, faintly floral, entirely itself. The smell alone is a full-body exhale and evokes too many memories to count.
And then: the mug. This, too, is non-negotiable. Some mornings it's the speckled one from Anthropologie—artistically imperfect in a way that feels intentional and too expensive, which I suppose it was, and I have no regrets. Other mornings it's the big, generous café au lait cup from Café du Monde—wide-mouthed, no-nonsense, carrying with it the ghost of a thousand New Orleans mornings. Both are correct. Both are mine. And both are part of the ceremony.
I take it somewhere quiet—my corner of the sofa, a window, wherever the morning light is doing something worth looking at—and I drink it slowly. This is not the coffee of a commute. This is not a coffee I am having while also doing seventeen other things. This coffee gets my full attention, and I maintain that it deserves it.
People will tell you that a morning ritual is about discipline, or mindfulness, or productivity. And sure, fine. But I think mine is simpler than that. We hear about romanticizing parts of our lives, our routines, and perhaps the love affair is done by uncomplicating the moments we value. For me, it's a small, daily argument that some things are worth doing well. That the beginning of a day deserves to taste like something. That the quiet, before the world remembers where you are, is worth showing up for.
The coffee is a small luxury. The quiet is a practice. Together, they are the Edit that makes everything after it possible.
Tokyo gave us a lot of things. Perspective. Yakitori at midnight. A particular appreciation for precision and beauty in the everyday. And this coffee—fragrant, lightly sweet, unapologetically good—which we carried home with us the way you carry home anything that subtly changes you: carefully, and with no intention of letting it go.
The house will wake up soon. The day will assert itself, as days do. Someone will need something—most likely camping related since my son and his friends are heading out for the next two nights. But right now, the mug is warm in my hands, the light is doing its slow morning dance across the floor, and the coffee—this particular, irreplaceable, slightly ridiculous love of my life—is exactly right.
