on COLD COFFEE

10:15 am: The last swig is down. It was grainy and cold but I've finished. I guess that means my day can officially begin. I remember hot cups of coffee. Ones I drank from the moment they came piping hot out of the coffee maker until I finished the last creamy, full-bodied sip that still left the tingle of a hot cup on my palms. Now, I can't remember a cup I haven't microwaved twice and gagged on the last icy drop. At least I have yet to give into my temptation to substitute a good creamer with breast milk, although my eyes do linger over the refrigerated bottles a little to long some mornings as my body cries out for just one good cup!

It's funny, these little brown pools of liquid that remind me so much of my "adult" life. It kind of makes me laugh how much I thought this bitter concoction would make me a real live "big girl". In middle school "going out for coffee" seemed like the most grown up thing a person could do. My friends and I would pile in one of our mom's SUVs all dudded up in our skirts and curled hair, with the newly found appreciation for eye makeup and lip gloss that didn't taste like anything and just looked pretty, and spend an evening at Jitters giggling over our sickeningly sweet mochas filled with creamer and at least 4 packets of sugar. A fistful of chocolate covered coffee beans at Timbuktu signified the end of eighth grade and being asked out to coffee with a friend and her boyfriend to "get to know each other better" cut the ribbon on my freshman year.

Throughout high school sucking down a bottled Starbucks Frappucino on our way to basketball games ensured that our squad of eight bubbly cheerleaders would fizzle out by half way through the 3rd quarter and in college cup of coffee on our porch would signify that two strangers had become friends.

Coffee never became as important to me than during my first full-time job out of college. I'm pretty sure you can't spend 24 hours awake on bus with 90 Jr. High students and not cry for coffee on Tuesday morning when you drag yourself into work because you've still got to plan Wednesday night activities for those same Jr. Highers who seem to have boundless energy, because a can of Red Bull does so much more for a 12 year old body than 5 cups of high-voltage brew can do for a 23 year-old woman.

Coffee does begin to loose it's charm when it's made by me in my own kitchen and drank over my infants son's head while we're reading a book. It helps to warm up the water in a kettle and steep it in a french press, it makes me feel, very...grown up. I guess I never realized how much coffee represented my adulthood to me. Not until I realized how very few adults get to drink coffee. At least coffee the way they like it, without it getting cold or having a few crystals left in the bottom of their cup. Not without thinking "yikes! this batch is bitter" or forgetting that these little beans once held any romance at all.

There are times when I'll get a great cup of coffee. When I'm out to dinner with my family and I get a great dessert cup with cream and sugar. Or when my mom and head out for a date and we sip Pumpkin Lattes in the front seat of her car. There are those times when I'll enjoy a full hour long conversation with a friend over the hot steam of a coffee house cup or those precious rare times when I'll look over the rim of my mug at my husband while he sips a smoothie. It's funny because these are the times I feel most like I did as a kid. The most free and care-less. There's something about a special cup of coffee that makes me remember what is was like to love shiny lip gloss instead of menthol chapstick and curly hair rather than a braided ponytail.

The times I feel most like an adult, most like the mom that I am are those 10:15 drops of ice cold coffee. Those are the drops I couldn't have imagined as a teenager. The chilly drops I wipe off of my baby's head after they've slipped from my cup, or the ones I clean up after I've bumped the coffee table for the 13th time. The rings left on the glass and the old grounds that are starting to stink up my sink. These are the tiny droplets I treasure.

I know I won't always have to reheat my cup while I wait for a bottle to warm up. I won't always have to put down my piping hot mug to change a blowout. I won't always choke on the last few grounds after fighting with a five month old to go down for a nap. One day, I'll sit with a steaming hot cup as I watch him board the bus, or watch my tears drip into my brew after I drop him off at college. There will be a time when I'll long for cold coffee because of all it represents.

So, here's to being a mom! Here's to dirty diapers, snotty noses and babies who try to eat Kleenex! I'll drink my nasty, gritty coffee to that!