A Cup of Coffee

Kala Shute

January 17, 2020

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I was raised by a single mother who was constantly trying to wrangle 4 kids at a time, whether it was yanking them off monkey bars at the park or cleaning an entire cereal bowl's worth of milk out of the carpet. “Non-traditional” would be the way other mothers defined my mom's parenting style, but I couldn't blame it all on her. You can only scream and cry so much that sprinkles don’t belong on fruit before a woman will give in. Usually, my siblings and I were pretty good at eating healthy, getting outside enough, and doing our homework, but people never really looked at how we acted as kids, they looked at my mom as a parent. We never ate dinner at a table all together or wore shoes anywhere but to the store and school. Paper plates were sprawled all across the house after a good meal. She taught us to give love and smile more than not. Others always saw that what my mom was doing was wrong rather than seeing her parenting how we saw it. My outfits at school never matched because I insisted I was able to pick out my own clothes. We walked to and from school since the age of four even though it made the school administration nervous. We liked spots on stripes and picking up sticks and dragging them through the sand on the way home. Nothing she ever did felt wrong to us, especially giving us a cup of coffee.

My mother was one to let her kids try anything and a cup of joe didn’t cross any lines. My first sip was when I was around five and my first cup around 6, and the start of my addiction (in a lighthearted manner) was when I was eight years old. From then on that became my “thing”. The other kids in the house would have a mug half full every here and there but my mother and I developed a system. Every morning before school our dodge minivan would pull into the first of two handicapped parking spots in front of the donut shop and she’d leave with a light pink box full of the last of the croissants and two cup holders filled with two piping hot cups of Golden Doughnut’s black coffee. She’d drop it off at home before heading to work and we’d wake up to some flaky pastries and my warm cup of steaming coffee. Other parents often stared at a 3rd grader lining up in the morning with a cup of coffee in her hand but eventually, it became common knowledge. Some kids would attempt to take a sip but the bitter liquid offered disgusted faces and brown tongues to all of its takers. This cup every morning was mine. I’d wake up my Saturday mornings to a hot cup of coffee waiting on the stove between the burners that she had picked up at McDonalds and dropped off before leaving for work, and Sunday mornings to a half-empty styrofoam cup, cold and the cap falling off, that I would finish for her on her nightstand that she had left there after a night shift at the hospital.

Every morning since I was a kid I have had a cup of coffee. My mom passed away two years ago. My coffee drinking stopped for a while because my favorite part wasn't if it had a nutty undertaste or a “deep aroma”, I just liked the idea of sharing it with someone. As I sit in my dorm room desk chair every morning I make my cup of coffee. And every afternoon I drink my second cup of coffee for her. The warmth of the mug reminds me of mornings on the porch together when I would wear her robe that was way too big for me and dragged leaves in as I came back inside. Drinking coffee every morning became a way for my mom and me to bond, and now it has become a way for me to heal as if I still have a part of my day to share with her. Happy sipping mama.

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“Rejoice in small things and they will continue to grow”

―Slaven Vujic

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