My Great Love of Coffee

My great love for coffee began at a very early age.  According to my family my great-grandfather gave me my very first sip of coffee when I was 2 weeks old.  I sadly don't remember this defining moment in my life, but my family states that when the teaspoon full of coffee touched my tongue, I lapped it as eagerly as a kitten drinking cream.  A love affair was born.  Even at a very young age I would reach for any cup of coffee that was in my reach.  Alas my family felt that other drink, such as milk, was better for me have, but I knew what I wanted and I would not be denied.

Milk remained my enemy.  I couldn't stand the stuff, and even as an adult now I don't particularly love it.  My mother tried every way under the sun to get me drink milk and I tried every way to avoid it.  Finally, my mother came up with a brilliant plan.  Every morning she started letting me have a cup of coffee and she would put my milk in the coffee.  I'm sure those early cups were probably a lot more milk than they actually were coffee, but I was so thrilled to be drinking the drink I loved so much that I eagerly drank it down every morning.  As I got older, the milk decreased and the coffee increased.  My mother held firm on only one cup a day until I became a teenager and then finally when I was 16 I was allowed to have 2 cups a day.   When 18 came around, all bets were off, and I had the utter freedom to drink as much of my beloved drink as I wanted.

I have not yet met a coffee that I don't like.  I love regular coffee, flavored coffee, sweetened coffee, black coffee, iced coffee, coffee candy, coffee ice cream and pretty much any other thing on the planet that involves coffee.  My most common way of drinking coffee is just straight black.  I like coffee strong.  When you can look down into a cup of coffee and see the bottom of the cup that is too weak for me.

Coffee was a huge part of my dating relationship with my husband Doug.  We dated for almost 3 years before we got married and every Saturday night we would go to a local coffee shop located in our hometown of Knoxville, TN.  We could get a cup of coffee for $1.25 and the best part of all was we could get unlimited refills.  We would sit and drink coffee and talk for hours.  We were so well known that we were on a first name basis with some of the serving staff.  One of the funniest moments that ever happened was the night that a new staff member started.  After filling our coffee cups for about the 6th or 7th time the staff member looked at both of us very seriously and asked "Do you two ever sleep?"  That coffee house is sadly closed now, but it will forever hold a special place in my heart as the place where I fell in love with my husband.  How utterly appropriate that one great love brought me to another.