A TEMPEST IN A COFFEE POT or ABOUT BLOGS

People sometimes ask me why I write the blogs I do.  Honestly, I don’t know.   Something happens; could be insignificant, could be big and then one day (mostly very early in the a.m.), I just sit down at my laptop and it comes out my fingers.  

An everyday, mundane event may start my creative juices flowing, such as having dinner out, buying a bar-b-que chicken, trying to help my (now) ex-fellow tenants, the power going out, coyotes howling …doesn’t sound like much, eh?  I never know what will cause the words to start flowing like the Mad River, which then causes me to get kinda Noisy and then you just don’t know what in the Nottawasaga will happen next.

I think the biggest thing which causes my mind to burble like one of those old-fashioned coffee percolators, with the glass knobie on top, are narcissistic bullies.  This description can apply, broadly, to either persons or companies.  AND because I believe in standing up for people who are being bullied, doesn’t matter by the who or the what,  I’ve had more than my share of those very same bullies trying to hound and intimidate me into stopping.  The Irish half of me don’t stop so easily.

One of the other things I’ve learned in life is that ‘The Truth Will Out’ and sometimes in the most unexpected ways.

Occasionally I ponder on the saying, ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ and wonder if that’s true to life, in these days of the excess glut on social media.  Fake news, fake posts, fake dying but that's a whole other story for another day.

Back in the 'olden' days, before the advent of the cell phone with camera, people would express their lives with the written word, some by keeping a diary (men would keep a journal, a 'diary' just not manly enough maybe)?    Your memories, perceptions and experiences are always in your head and heart, a pen and notebook handy or, typewriter or these days, a laptop.  Yes, time has a way of blurring some of those memories but what does that matter?  They’re your memories, your thoughts, your words and there is no right or wrong about ‘em. 

One of my favourite memories, growing up, is of my dad making coffee on Sunday mornings, in the battered old aluminum coffee pot with “that glass knobie thingie in the middle of the lid”.  

My dad would get up early, more or less his normal ‘get-up-to-go-to-work’ time, around 6:00 a.m.(ish) … yech.  I guess I’ve always been a light sleeper ‘cause my dad moving around the kitchen, getting his Sunday going, would quickly wake me up, even at 6:00.  If his bumbling about didn’t do it, I can tell you that the smell of fresh perked coffee, wafting throughout the whole house, did.  The tantalizing scent of fresh brew would lift me out of bed and almost cartoon-like, coax me on a zephyr, to join my dad in the kitchen. I think he did it on purpose!             

      

                                       

I try to get up before my Dad gets to his coffee-making ritual and enjoy watching how he goes about making “a pot of joe”, as he calls it.  First he has to find the pot, ‘cause my mom doesn't always put it back in the same place in the cupboard, which drives him crazy!  Then he rinses it out under a blasting stream of hot water, inspects it carefully for any minuscule ort which dares to remain and then refills it with cold, cold, cold water.  Opening the fridge door, he peers about nearsightedly, trying to find the can of coffee grounds.  This could take a few minutes, depending on when my mom last did grocery shopping.

It’s our special time, just my Dad and me on Sunday mornings, when I would join him for a coffee.  Until I get old enough to drink ‘real’ coffee, I have to settle for a glass of milk, in a coffee mug, with only a splash of the almost-black java.  It’s barely enough to taste and certainly not enough to change the white milk to even café-au-lait (just in case my mom decides to join us – she doesn’t think an 8-year- old should be drinking coffee).  We jaw about the week behind us and the week coming up.  I can talk to my dad about anything and everything and most of the time he knows what to pass onto my mom and what has to stay just between us.  

I sit at the battle scarred kitchen table and watch my dad assemble all the required ingredients, including the ‘secret’ one, on the speckled Formica counter.  He  pauses for a moment or two, as if to prepare himself mentally and then methodically begins to create his perfect pot of Sunday joe.

My favourite part watching this whole megillah (my mother’s favourite Yiddish word to describe an event), is delighting in the moment that something as mundane as cold tap water in the battered old aluminium pot starts to boil enough to drive the now transmogrified dark brew up the slender, hollow stem, which spears through the centre of the grounds basket and stops just short of the flat, round glass knob on the top.  

His most important job done for the moment, Dad wanders into the living room and peruses the Sunday comics.

Finally!  I let my dad know the coffee is perking and we both watch the glass knob, mesmerized by the steady burbling of the boiling brew and definitely revitalized by the aromatic steam coming from the slightly dented spout.   The scent is heavenly and blends well with the smoky trail coming from the cigarette dangling  at the left corner of my dad’s mouth, a white ribbon curling up and away.

How special those times were, with my Dad.  I moved out of the house when I was not quite 18 and my dad died when I was in my early twenties.  ‘They’ say that only the good die young and he did.  

And yes, I am a dedicated coffee drinker to this day.  My favourite saying – A Yawn is a Silent Scream for Coffee. 

And my second favourite -

                      My  

                                           

             belongs to   

            

                                         So there you go! 

Isn’t it funny, how thinking about narcissistic bullies reminds me of coffee burbling in the glass knobie thingie in an old coffee pot?  And that brings back such wonderful childhood memories?  And then, voila, it comes out my fingers?

Weird, huh?  But that’s just the way it happens.  AND, one day, probably one day soon, I’ll share with you more stories about my now ex-landlords, their henchmen, two-faced friends and living in Zombie Cove Acres.  I feel a blog coming on.

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