i love espresso. warm, energetic, chocolaty liqueur in a gay little cup. i’ve had espresso around me my entire life. childhood, undergrad, and grad school; espresso has always been there.
when i was a kid, my parents had an espresso machine and a coffee grinder. they got the espresso machine as a wedding gift and purchased the grinder themselves. the espresso machine has been pulling shots since before i was born. if there were ever issues with the machine, especially in its later years, my parents took it in for repairs. that espresso machine operated for two decades. it watched me grow into an adult. it was the machine i pulled my first shot on.
my parents wouldn’t let me have any coffee back then, which is totally understandable. who wants an eleven-year-old amped up on life, sugar, and caffeine? i was already bouncing off the walls and riling up my younger siblings. imagine the emotional and financial damage i could inflict on my parents if my antics were supercharged by a double shot of espresso.
but. occasionally, a special sunday morning would roll around. sun shining in the kitchen through the windows next to our table. my siblings sitting at the table arguing about who would get to play on the wii next in between bites of gravy-coated biscuits, and me eyeing the latte placed opposite me in front of my mom’s dining chair. on these mornings, when everyone else had left the kitchen except me and my mom, after we finished loading the dishwasher from the morning meal, she’d offer me a small sip of her coffee.
it didn’t matter to me that the latte had gone in and out of the microwave at least three times. my dad brewed it for her two hours prior to this moment, but my mom, between the stove and table, had little time to actually drink it. all that mattered to me was the sweet forbidden drink and the after-meal conversations with my mom. we could talk about anything for hours, sharing stories over coffee. what are her students up to? were they cute or annoying that week? what antics did those four-year-olds get up to that week? there were always stories to be shared between us—glimpses into each other’s lives.
i think this is why i love drinking espresso. it brings me back to those lived-in sunday mornings with my mom and family. the rich coffee smell floods my body and sends my mind afloat to these memories.