I remember my first cup of coffee, more or less. I think I was still twelve, or maybe just gone thirteen. Mom decided that I had finally come of age. I was old enough to participate in this most adult, yet very innocent, ritual, of savouring that morning cup of coffee. Mom had a Corningware percolator. She bought it, I think, when I was eight or nine years old. In the mornings I would wake up to the sound of the rhythmic musical rattle of that special coffeepot and the aromatic and intense beauty that can only be the fragrance of freshly brewed coffee, filling the house and filling me with it's heady and multi-layered beauty.
Enjoying that first cup of coffee, that rite of initiation into adulthood with Mom was something very special indeed. I think it was a Sunday morning. Naturally I had mine with cream and sugar, since my young palette still wasn't ready to appreciate the bitter. But, sweetened and creamed, it was delightful, and by the time I was fourteen, I was a regular in coffee shops. But I never made it myself. Mom, yes. The staff in cafes, natch. Likewise my adult friends if I happened to be visiting them in their homes. To me, there was some hidden magic involved in making a good cup of coffee and I was sure that I probably didn't possess it.
As I morphed into a teenage Jesus Freak, my attention turned more towards herbal teas. Caffeine was declared verboten, an evil toxin connected to all kinds of maladies, cancer among them. Gradually, in my early twenties, I began to experiment again with coffee, but only in coffee shops, or only as a guest in other people's homes and, of course, during the coffee time following church services. I could not imagine making anything special without somehow ruining it. In fact, so low was my self-confidence when I was young, I didn't think I could be trusted to make anything without somehow wrecking it. Except for one little detail. Already in my late teens, I was an excellent cook, and among my various circles my dinner parties became kind of a local legend.
I was twenty.four when Mom gave me her now old Corningware coffee percolator. Like Mom, I began to buy MJB coffee in the green can. There was something especially special, almost sexy about MJB coffee, and no, ducks, this is not a product endorsement. So, I began brewing it every morning and it was heavenly. I also found that I actually preferred my coffee black and bitter, which worked well for me, since I was too lazy to bother with cream or sugar, maybe milk sometimes. But in coffee shops, I was still a cream and sugar guy. And my mom had always preferred her coffee black and bitter and so I naturally came to imitate her.
The percolator had only a couple of years left in it, and when it finally perished, I bought a glass coffee pot, filter cone and paper filters. I had a kettle with a whistle, so that was how I made my coffee, until when I was twenty-nine Mom gave me my first ever coffee maker. By that time, I was still buying MJB, but also buying a special brand of espresso to mix it with, inspired by the Anglicans I was hanging out with at St. James. Living in the Commercial Drive area, or Little Italy, I was also starting to buy fresh roasted beans of various provenances from one of the local coffee roasters, Italian of course.
I was, by then, a true addict. No one was yet talking about fair trade, and I shudder to think of how many slave and underpaid indentured labourers in Ethiopia or in Brazil whose lives I was helping to make truly miserable from my indulgence. And I was hooked. If I went but one single day without my java fix, I was miserable. A junkie in full withdrawal. More tomorrow, Gentle Reader....
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