Sometimes morning looms. Or the week. Or, on days like today, it seems like the entire future is foreboding, terrifying, maddening.
That’s where the question comes in. It’s a question that need not be asked. The answer is known to both of us.
“Would you have a cup of coffee with me in the morning?”
My partner asks me this question often, especially on Sunday nights or nights where the coming days seem stranger or more difficult than usual. I love that he asks even though he knows I will always say yes. It’s an invitation to be together and set the tone for our day. No matter what, in the morning we will share hot cups of coffee and wish each other luck. It’s one of the things we’ve done for years, and I hope to keep doing with him for decades.
There have been times when he’s been gone. For a year and a half, once. That was the worst. Other times for eight weeks or so. The first cups of coffee we share together when he’s back safely are the best. I’m not good at making coffee just for myself anyway - it’s always too strong. We are, all, ultimately animals. Albatrosses dance together after having been apart for months. I share a cup of coffee with my partner in the morning. We sit, we drink, we commiserate, we buoy one another. It’s a dance of a different sort, but one that other critters would recognize instantly.
The cups we drink from haven’t changed much, either. There’s a mug from the Archie Bray, once gilded, now with a chip in the handle and the gold worn from the edges. A mug from the Royal BC Museum with an octopus on it that now has a chip in the edge after being in my care for ten years. My dad gave me a precious mug with a single black sheep on it that nobody else is allowed to drink from, because this vessel came from my grandma Adele, who I never got to meet. These cups have come with us for countless moves and they’re usually one of the first things I unpack. We’ve lived in grotty shitholes and comparative palaces; once a yellow house on a tree-lined street, another time a 70s apartment atrocity that made us both feel crazy, with seagulls screaming at all hours and horrible neighbors that made me think violent things. Through it all, we shared coffee in the morning as often as we could, even if we didn’t have a real table to sit at or furniture to speak of.
This morning I was thinking about Trump’s deportation plan which will toss immigrants who are often from places that America has ravaged for decades to the wind. Take your pick: crushing democratic movements, funding coups, propping up US corporate interests, etc. - there’s a veritable imperial buffet of options we’ve plated and served to sovereign nations over the years. We inevitably cry invader as the battered souls of people limp their way to us because they no longer have a home. We do this even as we are in desperate need for them.
It does no good to ruminate on these melancholic thoughts without a plan of action, and when I started to say them outloud, my partner made it clear that this cup of coffee we were sharing was worth holding sacred, because it was a bright spot in what is going to be a no good day. No use tearing into everything that’s wrong - joy and care are precious in these times more than ever, and the happiness of a hot cup of strong coffee, shared with my person, deserves to be held high above the fray of fear and negativity.
Sometimes this pragmatism of his drives me nuts - it’s so obnoxiously Brazilian, to me, for him to be able to hold space for the good bits. Brazil has been a pell-mell mess of a place forever and in order to survive the chaos you’ve got to be able to grab hold of the good parts and appreciate them for what they are. If you don’t you’ll go insane. As America becomes a more and more precarious place to live, I think we would do well to be pragmatic like that. In America, instead of treasuring the time it takes to make and share coffee, you could have worked for thirty minutes on a side hustle or some other bullshit - and if you didn’t, you’re clearly at fault later if you’re financially struggling or other life things are not going well. (Cue massive eye roll and pass me a cafezinho.)
So, this morning, I drank my cup of coffee and made sure to enjoy it, at the very least out of respect for my annoyingly correct partner and out of spite for this incoming asshole who is going to make things rotten. Joy out of spite sounds nice to me right now in an acidic, satisfying way. It means I can keep boring a hole in the bedrock of gloom that this incoming administration is going to attempt to crush us with.
Tomorrow I’ll wake up in the cold apartment (the furnace is horribly loud and we turn it off at night), shuffle into the kitchen, turn on the kettle, and go wake the rattling beast to heat the place. After blearily brushing my teeth and combing my hair, I’ll grind coffee beans from Costco and let the aroma of them wake me slowly. I’ll spoon grounds into the Aeropress, careful to not let them spill everywhere. The kettle will make a soft click, letting me know the water is boiled, and I’ll pour the hot water over the grounds, stirring them until a rich, golden foam forms on the surface. Ritual, rhythm, ritual, the pulse of our quiet, sleepy apartment, the heartbeat of the morning. My partner will emerge, dressed for work, and by that time the coffee will be pressed and ready, served in the mugs we’ve had for years. It won’t be light out yet. The lights of cars heading to work will beam in through the windows. The moon has been hanging low in the sky for me to gaze at lately. Not all will be well (or even somewhat okay) in the world, but I’ll share coffee with my person and do my best to start the day with love and hope and a good ritual that gives proper weight to the wonders of being alive, even if I will feel like I’m having coffee at the edge of a precipice. It won’t be the first time.
End note: For those of you who feel drained, there are so many ways that we can chip away at these horrible times. Organized labor is a great one. Claw back the profits that your work created, because goodness knows with how productive we all are we should all be making double or triple what we do. Giving money, even if it’s just a few bucks, to whatever is close to your heart can help - abortion funds are ideal right now because bodily autonomy for the few is a danger to all. Even going to the library and making sure that it remains a publicly funded service is vital, so go check out a book or a graphic novel or read the paper there.
Please keep reading and being curious, because it will help you imagine solutions instead of dead ends. I say all of this as somebody who has, too often, worn myself into a useless frenzy that did nobody any good, not as a better-than human. Goodness knows after I send this out I’ve got a call scheduled with my best friend in Germany to hash out the horror show of today. I’ve got my own wallowing to do, but I also need to check in on what’s going on in Montana’s legislative session, because I can call the switchboard and leave my reps voicemails about bills I feel strongly about. I want to be a thorn in the sides of powers that be as much as I can this year.
Thanks for being here. I hope that you have rituals that allow you to hold fast to the good things and give you energy to navigate the bad. Hold each other tight.