11 “Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee” by Molly Manion

Coffee. I love it. You love it. Your little sister loves it. Your grandpa loves it. Anytime we want it, most of us have access to coffee in some form and in varying degrees of quality. For most of us, it’s a morning necessity. If you miss your morning coffee, the whole day is thrown off: you’re late for your first appointment, you forgot to pack a lunch, you can’t find your car in the parking lot. Sure, your brain is likely to be foggy just from the lack of caffeine but there’s something more. You feel like you’re missing something, like you forgot to put on mascara or zip up your pants. A vital step in the preparation for the day was missed.

The rise of coffee chains like Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts have made coffee shops not only a place where you can get coffee, but a place that can be shared with others who are engaging in the same activity. Complete communities are built in and around cafe culture that might not otherwise exist. Seeing our favorite barista at the counter is almost better than the drink itself. The need for caffeine draws people into this space but allows them to find other reasons to stick around.

Growing up, I lived in a small town that didn’t have any coffee chains and the closest thing I got to Starbucks was a McCafe mocha latte. Still though, coffee was always a part of my family’s daily ritual, my dad drinking sometimes drinking a few pots in one day. At the end of family dinners, the adults would sit with their coffee and cake and talk about problems that I couldn’t understand then, but would someday face myself.

In high school, I worked as a barista at one of the only specialty coffee shops in my town. It was a local place that my friend’s parents had opened. Rarely would the customers know or even care about the quality of the roasting or where the bean was originally harvested, but they knew that they wanted to be a part of a community whose entire purpose was to give others the energy they needed to get through the day. Whether that was through actual caffeine, or because the barista remembered a regular’s order.

There’s no denying the effect caffeine has had on our culture, but the actual coffee has been able to separate itself as something more than just a vessel for the caffeine. It can build bridges to cross rivers that some languages cannot even forge. Coffee is able to be the centerpiece of a community as small as a family unit or as large as an entire coffee plantation.

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes in her collection “Braiding Sweetgrass” about the importance of these unconscious ceremonies in our lives. She says, “What else can you give but something of yourself? A homemade ceremony, a ceremony that makes a home.” To many, coffee has become an individual and communal ritual with every sip.