Hello coffee, my old friend.

Tags

coffee, life

It was a busy week of weaving myself back into sharing live music with folks in three dimensions. More miles on the car, more hours on my voice and fingers, more hearts and minds touched, more connections made. It’s been really exciting and strange and wonderful to be at it again.

And tiring, too, at times.

I recently started drinking coffee again, after many years of not. I used to drink it all day every day, until a kidney stone literally brought me to my knees in the spring of 2003. At a follow up visit, the doctor who looked at the analysis of the calcium oxalate stone I passed (after two of the most excruciating days of my life) asked in a very casual way, ‘Do you drink a lot of coffee?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well,’ he said gently, ‘you might want to consider cutting back.’

Oh, I cut back, alright. Cold turkey. And it really sucked. No tea, no coffee. I even gave up chocolate entirely until just a few years ago. The pain of that stone was enough to terrify me away from all forms of caffeine for many years.

My Scottish mother was a tea drinker, so I drank black tea in the womb, and then from a mug when I was old enough to hold it myself. I was hooked early. And I thought the black coffee my father drank all day at work and after church on Sundays was awful – until I tried it with cream and sugar. WHOA! That hooked me as a young teenager, and then I became even more of a caffeine fiend – until that damned kidney stone.

For nearly 20 years, I never stopped wanting coffee, never stopped melting at the smell of it, never stopped longing for the ritual of it. I had always wanted to be a ‘just-one-cup-in-the-morning’ person, something my 20-something self was entirely unable to pull off.

40-something me, however, felt ready, and so at some point during the pandemic, I started taking a sip or two of Shawn’s coffee in the morning.

At first, I thought I was being untrue to myself and to my principles, that I was doing something ‘bad’. I had the kidney stone right around the time that I was getting serious with my ex (the controlling and abusive one). He wasn’t a coffee drinker, so it was easy (well, besides the withdrawal, heh) to give it up. He also had very strong opinions about coffee and about addiction in general, both of which were quite harsh and judgmental. He thought – expected, really – that I gave it up for him. And I probably thought that too, for a long time – but no, I gave it up for me, and I started up again for me as well.

The two sips from Shawn’s mug gave way to the half cup of black I now enjoy every morning. Once in a while, I’ll have a whole cup—when we were in San Francisco, I took a shine to this little coffee stand a couple blocks from where we were staying that had a fantastic pour over, and I also drank a full cup most mornings at jazz camp in New Orleans this year (and also had some very enjoyable pour over from French Truck Coffee a couple of mornings). I also had a full cup of clever drip last weekend from 19 Drips in Ann Arbor, and had a sip or two from Shawn’s 16 oz from The Coffee Pedaler in New Haven yesterday. Otherwise, it’s been my little half cup here at home, taking sips while working on my morning writing and peeking out at the bird feeders.

I’m enjoying renegotiating my relationship with caffeine, and having so much fun sharing in the adventure of it with Shawn. The Acoustic Trio had some shows in Connecticut this weekend, and while enjoying some French press at the kitchen table and a discussion of brewing methods, our host got up from her chair, went over to the cupboard, and surprised Shawn and me by giving us her Aeropress that she didn’t use anymore. ‘Too much fuss for too little coffee,’ she explained with a laugh.

So, back home now, I’m sipping my first taste of Aeropress coffee as I type these words, and I really like it. And Shawn is having a lot of fun researching and considering more brewing methods. (Have we turned each other into coffee snobs? heh)

My life is now a Ray Charles lyric: ‘Ev’ry mornin’ when the sun comes up / [h]e brings me coffee in my favorite cup’ – and I couldn’t be happier about that.

Saturday Morning Musings – Itching for a fix.

Tags

addiction, caffeine, childhood, coffee, Heather Pierson, life, looking back, perspective

I’ve quit a lot of things.

I get hooked on things easily.  Substances, foods, people, songs, movies, books.  An addictive personality, I guess you’d call it.

Caffeine was my gateway drug.

My mother was born and raised in Scotland, where tea is the thing.  My dad did drink coffee but only at work and on Sundays after church.  It was very rarely brewed in the house – my mother hated the stuff and would only occasionally tolerate it.

Black tea, with a little bit of milk and sugar.  I was imbibing this stuff, literally, in the womb.  Mom admitted to me when I was a teenager that she smoked her Winstons and drank her Boone’s Farm the entire time she was pregnant with me, so it’s hard to imagine she would’ve forsaken caffeine for her unborn child.

I loved the daily tea ritual.  For as far back as I can recall, I drank a cup in the morning before school, another when I got home, and then sometimes again with dinner.  Like Pavlov’s dog I was drawn to the whistling kettle, the clink-c-clink-c-clink-ding-ding-ding of the teaspoon.  I loved the distinct sweetness of each flavor – the spoonful of teeth-achingly sweet sugar, the mellowing quality of the dollop of milk, and then the body of the drink – the bitter attack and sweet finish of the aromatic orange pekoe.

To this day, I can close my eyes and relive this moment of heavenly indulgence.

Little did I realize though how deeply addicted I’d become to caffeine, and it certainly didn’t stop with tea.

Every Friday, my father would return from work with his weekend beer, some licorice allsorts for my mother, and for me – a pack of Garbage Pail Kids and a six-pack of Jolt.  I remember so many occasions of being so wired and jittery from drinking a couple of Jolts and then inexhaustibly practicing my Hanon and my Mozart.

In high school, I added NoDoz to my regular intake of caffeine.  I remember one weekend in particular when I didn’t sleep for nearly 48 hours, swallowing handfuls of these little white tablets, grinding my teeth and feverishly writing a bizarre stream-of-consciousness into one of my school notebooks.

I didn’t discover the wonders of coffee until I was fourteen.

I had certainly tried coffee, but only that black and painfully bitter stuff that my father drank with Dr. D during Sunday morning coffee hour.   He got quite a chuckle out of my reaction to that horrible stuff.

Not until I was playing in a band called Garajh Mahal with Alan, Roby and Jared did I find out what I was truly missing.

Alan pulled out his green thermos at rehearsal one day and started pouring what looked like tea into the detached mug.

“Is that tea?”

Alan laughed.  “Hell no, that’s coffee.”

Coffee? I thought.  That didn’t look like any coffee I had ever seen.

“Would you like to try some?” he asked.

“Sure,” I replied, fully expecting to hate the taste of it as I had before.  One sip was all it took.  There was cream and there was sugar in this stuff!  Wow!  Yet another caffeine delivery mechanism!

Of course I still drank tea at home, popped my NoDoz pills at school, but I would drink coffee whenever I could sneak it in – at band practice, occasionally at school, after church on Sundays.

Once I was living on my own, I drank coffee all day long.   On the way to work, at work, on the way home from work, with dinner.

I knew I needed to quit, or at least cut back.  My stomach felt sour; I couldn’t drink enough water to feel properly hydrated.  I tried many times to have just a breakfast coffee, but that would slowly snowball into breakfast and then mid-morning, and then, what’s the harm in a coffee with lunch?  And hell, I’ve worked hard today, I’ll have a coffee on the way home…

But I kept trying.  I knew, for me, it was the right move.

By the time I’d moved to Fryeburg in February 2003, I had for the most part given up caffeine.  I still drank a little coffee at work, I just wasn’t drinking it at home (my ex would get angry if he smelled it on me).

Then, a kidney stone struck in April 2003 – a pain so severe and debilitating that I’ve been told is more intense than childbirth.   (And I won’t even begin to relate how powerfully addictive oxycodone is.)

Turns out that I had the most common type of stone, which is calcium oxalate.  The culprit?  My beloved caffeine.

It was time, once and for all.  I would suffer any sacrifice in order to not experience that pain ever again.

So, it’s been over ten years since I have had any caffeine.  No tea, no coffee, no soda.  I have even given up chocolate.

Extreme?  Some may think.

I am still completely captivated by the smell of coffee, by the ritual of the preparation.   No matter where I am – in the grocery store aisle, in a restaurant, at a venue – whenever I am near coffee, I always take a moment to close my eyes and breathe deeply.

I wish I could have a healthy relationship with caffeine, but for me it’s an obsession that can only end badly.

“Well, maybe one cup wouldn’t hurt,” I’m often tempted to think…