Andy HoffmanIn my thirties, going into my forties, I became a coffee snob. Grinding beans each morning for the espresso machine. Using purified water rather than tap. Buying single-source beans from a fair-trade roaster. I didn’t go as far as so many other people I knew who installed commercial coffee makers in their kitchens or came to private arrangements with small-batch roasters in obscure places, but I did follow the fashion of the day.
I won’t defend myself. We all go mad for periods of our lives. I had become the father to young children, had – after some significant but non-financial success – set aside my writerly ambitions, and struggled with my marriage. I didn’t think better coffee would offer me an escape from those hurdles, but it did provide a ten-minute respite each morning.
I rarely took more than an large single cup each day. My caffeine addiction had become serious when I missed my morning brew and developed a headache before noon, but frankly I regarded that very mild addiction as more of a badge of honor than a personal weakness. I liked breakfast then too, but I mostly had a bowl of cereal or toast with sliced turkey and a bit of fruit. Occasionally on weekends I would take the family out for breakfast, and I noticed that the coffee compared unfavorably to the brew I made at home, but the slight difference hardly mattered in the end. The coffee had become little more than a caffeine delivery system. That’s when I began sweetening the espresso with chocolate. The morning mocha mattered more than the coffee part of it. I stopped grinding beans, bought supermarket brands, and switched to a French press.
But this is all backstory, as is the fact that I solved the marriage by leaving it, and that the person I chose to leave it for proved faithless. During that period, though, I discovered that the quality of chocolate mattered. I sometimes resorted to Hershey’s syrup, but I found myself hoarding tins of the good-quality seasonal hot cocoa mix, particularly Trader Joe’s European Sipping Chocolate, which usually ran out in early January.
Deb has instituted a ritual for me (she’s very big on rituals and traditions, probably the result of moving around so much as a child): delivering me coffee in bed. We wake up, sometime between 7 and 9, snuggle as time allows, and then she gets up to make me coffee, which she brings to me in heavy blue-and-white stoneware mugs she acquired in Mexico. This coffee delivery, created from pieces of both our pasts, has become fundamental to our relationship. We often use store-brand coffee, organic mostly, and good quality cocoa. She brings it to me while I lay in bed, and does so with such pride and kindness that the ritual itself has overtaken the caffeine, or the water, or the fresh-ground beans. That love-in-a cup has sustained me through bad days and made better days better. It occupies such a prominent place that, even when we plan to go out for breakfast, and even frequently when we travel, I gratefully accept this steaming cup of love, at home, in bed, and with endless gratitude.
