Sunday Coffee

It’s a crisp Tuesday morning in 2012. I’m running late for the third day of fourth grade because I slept in again and ignored all my mom’s yells to “Wake up!” from the bottom of the stairs. The bagel she toasted for me is cold, but I spread cream cheese on it anyway and throw everything into my backpack haphazardly, even the homework I haven’t started yet. She’s sitting on the couch, sipping a lukewarm cup of coffee. The cream is starting to separate because of how long she’s been letting it sit, but she doesn’t care too much because she’s too focused on getting the warm, bitter liquid down her throat before we leave. That’s the thing about the first cup in the morning, she’d said. The taste doesn’t matter, just that you drink it.

It’s no secret that coffee beans make the world go ‘round. Whether it’s plastered over a Forever 21 shirt as not to talk to its wearer before the morning cup, present in the form of a coffee pot in over 80 percent of American households, or making you late to morning classes because you couldn’t make it without your coffee: it’s unavoidable. Money, love, sex, phones, air… and coffee. Just one small espresso bean has its own profile: dark-roasted, small, bitter, smoky, gritty, rich, nutty, aromatic, full-bodied, and packs a punch. Used around the world for an energy boost, they’re eaten smothered in chocolate, chopped and folded into a rich midnight dessert, or ground up and brewed into a delicacy you can pour over ice cream, whip with sugar, or spice with cardamom. That, or the brew is poured, doused with half-and-half, and left to sit for a bit while you wait for your sleepy child to get themselves ready for fourth grade.

But coffee didn’t start there. Coffee’s official marked cultivation and trading began in Arabia, where it was grown across the Yemeni mountains sometime before the 1400s. The simple act of having a cup of coffee for an energy boost was first novel, then became widespread: globally, coffee house locations grew in popularity quickly due to their social nature. In the afternoons, it wasn’t uncommon to venture out to a coffee house to have a cup, talk to your peers, catch up on current news and events, watch local performances, enjoy live music, or play chess. The social setting spawned by the coffee bean quickly became an essential component of sharing information, effectively enfolding itself into the social fabric of the world. So it’s no wonder that my relationship with my mother is built around coffee. It would find its way into the DePrisco family tree, sculpting the bond between my mother and her father, then between me and her.

I’m twenty now; I make myself coffee almost every morning, I’ve been working in a coffee shop since my freshman year of college, and I can confidently differentiate lattes and cappuccinos and cortados – so it’s safe to say I’ve grown up to love to coffee quite a bit. Despite my lifelong disdain for history classes, I still readily recall learning about coffee houses a couple years back and how integral they were to people’s development of class consciousness and their questioning of social structures that would go to produce revolution. Whether those were Turkish, Viennese, or Italian coffee houses, one thing remained consistent: they served as critical, ever-changing social spheres.

Globally, the process of coffee preparation varies greatly and, historically, it has changed and refined with each technological development. Regardless, some things remain unchanged: fresh, green coffee “beans” are harvested from the coffee plant (which are truly just the plant’s unripened fruits). These beans are dried and roasted at low, medium, or high temperatures for varying amounts of time to release their oils and flavors before they are ground up, eaten, or brewed accordingly.

The infamous Turkish coffee, one of the very first developed forms of brewing, is prepared very specifically. After the beans’ initial roasting, they are stored in a wooden box, preferably built of a nutty wood, to properly capture the beans’ oils and enhance the flavor. The beans must be very finely ground, ensuring maximum flavor profile, with a wooden mortar and pestle (or, contemporarily, a milling device). The most crucial component of the Turkish method is the use of the cezve, a forged copper flask built to hold one cup of coffee, which the brewer must fill with spoonfuls of the grounds, cold water, and the preferred amount of sugar before brewing over hot sand, traditionally, and fire, nowadays. The coned form of the cezve properly develops the coffee’s crema, the foamy layer atop the brew built by gaseous carbon dioxide, without bittering the flavor or aroma. The coffee must not boil, and the brewer must pour directly from cezve to cup. 

Regardless of method, the preparation of a cup of coffee is an intimate and particular process. While some may call for more rules and regulations than others, coffee brewing around the globe is tested, refined, and whittled down to the perfect cup – and my own time as a barista was no different. While we served various kinds of coffees – hot drip, iced drip, iced blends, or bar drinks – each had its own specificities and guidelines to ensure consistency and quality. Even before my employment, I had my coffee-making compartmentalized and stepped: with Mom’s Keurig back home, I knew I’d need half a mug of ice and a small brew to leave enough room for my inch of oat milk and eyeballed splash of maple syrup. To me, making coffee was about finding the recipes you liked: the flavors that resonated, the ones that matched the weather, the ones you knew paired well with an over-toasted bagel or stood alone even better. As I grew to try more coffees, to test more beans, to try new recipes, Mom’s old refrain – the taste doesn’t matter, just that you drink it – resonated less and less.

I’ve always known that my mom is a busy woman, balancing single motherhood with her passion for writing and a fervent desire to provide happy, healthy lives for her two children. Her lifestyle has always consisted of firing all cannons: wake up early, clean the house, get everyone ready for their day, get out the door, and work until it’s time to get to sleep; rinse; repeat. I saw her work ethic and her lifelong mindset in her: she started working in her dad’s liquor store whilst her age was still a single digit, and she was parenting her little sister just as much as her three elder sisters. Her plates have always been full, and her entire life has been a balancing act: so it’s not shocking that her optimal cup of coffee is quick and easy. At home, she’ll brew a medium cup and top with half and half. When she ventures to a shop, she’ll order an iced americano – the notable easiest espresso drink to prepare, and simultaneously one of the most caffeinated – that may occasionally contain a splash of cream, depending on how much she’s dieting that month. My mom has always aimed to streamline; me, not so much.

I’m an autistic young adult with ADHD and OCD, barely eking out one assignment per week when I’m not too fixated on staying mentally afloat. I find myself exhausted at the thought of doing my laundry, and the simple act of going to work is enough of a social occasion to leave me bedridden for a few hours and an afternoon nap. I admire my mother’s drive, and I simultaneously know that I am not physically capable of it. My neurobiology requires a slower lifestyle and time to process my thoughts, emotions, and sensations if I’m to exist at my happiest and most efficient. My coffees reflect this: I like to prepare something new when I have the time, playing with multiple flavor inclusions or mixtures of milk bases while adjusting coffee concentration on a sliding scale from espresso to long drip. I’m drinking an earl gray latte as I write this, and I might drink a white mocha tomorrow. Drinking coffee began as an energy booster for me, because that’s what I’d learned from my mom, and that’s what I needed to power myself through all of high school and the leading half of my undergraduate program. My ADHD diagnosis led me in a new direction: I was advised not to consume caffeine with my medication, as to avoid hyperactivity and panic, so I opted for decaf from then on. The odd part followed: my coffee drinking habits didn’t change. I didn’t need the coffee to wake up, I needed the flavor to make me feel present in my body. It wasn’t a caffeine addiction, but a coffee addiction. My coffees weren’t a source of drive, they were a stabilizing factor that helped me feel empowered: with coffee, I was decisive enough to choose my flavor of the day; I was in tune with my body enough to know that I wanted to drink it; I had enough self respect to make the time for an indulgence that ultimately didn’t provide anything but a flavor. Coffee to me was much different than coffee to my mother: it was always the flavor that mattered, not just that I drank it.

Since becoming a barista, I’ve garnered an in-family reputation as the coffee connoisseur, which I actively welcome, as someone who truly enjoys the process of making a cup for someone. When I visit home, my mom and I always aim for a Sunday morning chat over our respective cups of coffee: my iced white mocha with oat milk, her hot drip coffee with cream. When I’m away from home, I’ll call her up on Sunday mornings at 5:40 A.M., the time when I head out for my opening shift at the café. We’ve ritualized our Sunday mornings, always doing our best to include each other in our coffees of the day, and catching the other one up on the past week. Both of us struggle to make consistent chats – she’s busy, and I’m still learning how to mature and take care of myself – but our Sunday coffees give us the space and time that we need together. It calls back to the origin of coffee culture, the infamous coffee house, and reminds me that coffee has always been an essential social lubricant – it’s what’s helped our relationship develop into the best friendship that it is.

My mom’s busy; that’s no secret. Many of my friends who also have parents in-state get regular visits from them, even if only for a night or two – but my mom’s only managed one visit in my three years here. Unlike my friends, though, I’ve never been bothered by this – I alternatively see it as a feature of our relationship. We’re close, but we’re different kinds of people; it’s a little more difficult to organize trips and visits together. Besides, I think it just made this visit a bit more special to me.

On her sole visit, the first place my mom stopped was my work. It was a relatively warm Sunday morning, around 7:30 A.M., and she caught me reading my book of the week. She made her way over to my favorite register to lean on and ordered what I expected: an iced americano (no cream) and half a cheese danish (the other half marked for me, naturally). Like the back of my hand, I filled her cup halfway with ice and pulled the filtered tap water up until about an inch of room remained. I pulled the ground espresso (which, unfortunately, were the same beans that my café used for the house brew) for its 5.20 seconds, measuring to an even 18.0 grams, then tamped and brushed reflexively. I attached the portafilter to the leftmost head and pulled the two shots for 16 seconds, then poured them directly onto the ice water without a moment to spare (though I find the idea of a ‘burnt’ shot a fearmongering device spread by Starbucks’ shitty espresso, I still try to keep the shots fresh). I pressed the lid into place and gave the drink a healthy swirl, handing it off with a sense of pride and excitement. Even if the taste doesn’t matter, I want my mom’s coffee to be as good as I can get it. She may never see what’s so important about the specificities of coffee brewing, and I may never understand what’s so fulfilling about keeping the day stacked with tasks, but maybe those are gaps that don’t need bridges. My mom and I are fundamentally different people, with plenty in common and plenty to discuss over our cups. Maybe that’s what Sunday coffee has always been about.