Cafecito

Mami called her first cup of coffee mi taza de entendimiento, my cup of understanding. I gave up coffee in 1998, and I’ve missed that acrid sweet bite on my tongue every morning, especially the first sip when brain fog starts to lift. In this year of restraint and solitude, I started drinking coffee again.

This was Mami’s coffee cup. I remember we bought it at Olvera Street, which was the only touristy place where we would see our name on cups or keychains. I used it for a few years after she passed away. After it chipped, I stored it safely.

In the coffee-less two decades, I relished brewing for guests and lovers. I have a French press and always have beans in the freezer. Smelling the grounds while measuring, gave me a hit of pleasure, as if my body recalled the caffeine jolt.

I don’t remember the first time I tasted coffee, but I know it was on a summer trip to Ecuador where even children start the morning with café con leche. In truth, it is leche con a tiny bit of café, really just a drop to flavor the hot milk–that drop of bitterness in the sweet milk, a symbolic lesson that life is bittersweet.

I gave up coffee and switched to black tea during the prolonged break up of a relationship where I clung to straightness and made myself smaller. My anxiety ridden body could barely sleep and I felt nauseous most mornings. A friend suggested I stop drinking coffee. I was willing to try anything while I scraped up enough money to leave. Who can stomach acid and bitterness when you’re repressing desire?  

Recently I opened a box of old journals and found this fragment of an unfinished poem from that year.

My lover is as bitter
as gin and I hate our gin-n-tonic
bed as much as the blooming bougainvillea
that mocks me through the window.

I barely think about that period anymore. But I’ve had a lot of time alone this year to reflect and reinvent how I want to come back after there is herd immunity. Also, what to keep and what to discard, not just stuff that I’ve accumulated, pants that don’t fit, a lock from a storage space I no longer have, but notions of how I want to live my life. The essential stuff. The domestic rituals I follow, beliefs of my essential self. Am I really someone who doesn’t drink coffee because of the past, or do I truly yearn for a soul-mate relationship where our lives are inseparable?  

A new friend, Renee, who is a florist bought me a latte while I was at her sidewalk pop-up shop. Flowers and plants are essential depression antidotes. Especially Renee’s arrangements. She chooses sculptural flowers, branches, and leaves. Ranunculus, bird of paradise, eucalyptus. Even common flowers like roses and carnations look wild, as if picked on a walk.      

The coffee Renee bought for me was not just any latte, but a date latte made with oatmilk. So fancy and so L.A. That gesture of friendship touched me deeply. I accepted even though it had been twenty-three years. I convinced myself that I could have a sip or two, then nurse the cup the way I do with a glass of whiskey. I was afraid the caffeine would be too much for me and I’d never sleep again. Instead, I lost myself in the first sip. All my senses except taste fell away. No buckets of flowers and arrangements. My friends’ conversation receded to unintelligible coos. No traffic noise on Sunset Boulevard in Echo Park, even the fire station across the street. Just this delicious coffee. Then I had an amazing afternoon. Colors and sounds heightened. My orange pants, snippets of music from passing cars. The socially distanced conversation with friends Lynn and Tam which is always delightful, was even more so. They laughed at how animated I was. I was joking and moving like I did in the before times. I thought YES, una taza de entendimiento. Why have I been away from you for so long?  And I slept fine. A few weeks later, I bought an Italian stovetop espresso percolator, and a milk frother. Now I have weekend lattes.

One theory of reincarnation is that we have multiple lives in one lifetime. The question I have, at fifty-five, am I a different person than the fifteen-year-old Alicia who moved to Ecuador on mami’s whim, or the thirty-three-year-old desperately repressing my queerness? I associated drinking coffee with that bad relationship. In this year inside with my cats who are the only beings I touch, I find out that I love living by myself and that unlike any other time in my life, I don’t feel inadequate being a singleton. This year, riding waves of depression and anxiety, fear and compassion, I found my writing voice again. As we slowly come back, changed by this profound time, may I remember that the way I live is malleable and that is true for everyone.  

What is your taza de entendimiento?

PS- Renee and I have crossed paths many times over the last twenty-five years–kismet and future blog!