scribblechic

I have a complicated love affair with coffee. We met during the sleepiest days of my second child’s infancy; it was a time of adjustments and worries, early mornings and divided attention. I was muscling through hard parts of beautiful days, tired and a little lost.

It was during a holiday outing, a girls’ night of window shopping, in stores draped with carols and punctuated with evergreens that I first resigned myself to a curious desperation. My order was a confection of sugar, anything to mask the coffee I was unaccustomed to.

That evening I was intoxicated by the energy my indulgence afforded me. In the months to come it would evolve from an occasional treat to a necessary routine. The word coffee became an excuse; a reward for special accomplishments, courage on difficult days, an entitlement and a distraction.

I sustained this level of need for over a decade. My greed accompanied me on family vacations and school meetings, quiet mornings and busy evenings. In the winter I accessorized after school pick-up with a warm beverage and in the summer my habit was accommodatingly cool.

Where once I wouldn’t have been tempted to sample coffee, I was rarely without my clutch. Until this fall. My routines disrupted, I fell out of habit in my excuses. The only coffee I drank was served at a table, in a thick oversized mug that seemed sweeter for the length of time it required to consume it.

In this moment I indulged less for the assumption of energy and more for the gentler experience of pleasure as stillness. I recognized contentment in the unhurried peace and no longer craved the mad rush of frenzied busyness that blurred empty distractions.

My responsibilities and worries have not changed, but I have become calmer and less frivolous in my indulgence; practicing a greater mindfulness and moderation in moments of more intentional habits.