Welcome to Gaia! :: View User's Journal | Gaia Journals

~True story.~
~*~Coffee First~*~
Vanilla caramel.
The label glared at me, so bright and promising of the sweet flavor inside the coffee creamer container.
I pulled it out of the fridge and went back to my cup, pouring it over the sugar, then adding the actual coffee.
Coffee is my guilty pleasure. Where most girls my age have chocolate and boys, mine is coffee. Not because of the taste, no. I drink it every day almost, but not because I like the taste.
The caramel promised a sweet addition to the bitter drink, so I had decided to add it to my morning routine.
I took a sip, and the 'sweet flavor' was ash in my mouth.
I choked back a sob as the memories came flooding into my mind. Waking up at seven to find the coffee already made. I'm suddenly ten years old again, in Shelby, North Carolina, a small yet fancy trailer (as fancy as mobile homes can be, with a nice cement porch and clean as a whistle), and the most beautiful seventy-year-old woman in the world in the kitchen. Unbroken eggs on the counter, smiling up at me, waiting for her to teach me the magic of cooking.
Coffee first.
Always.
She shows me the caramel flavoring, real caramel, she says. She also had vanilla. I take both and a lot of sugar.
Coffee first, yes.
The slam of the screen door as we step onto the porch, the chilly air of early spring biting at my toes. We sit together in the rocking chair, me in her lap.
Coffee first.
We talk of school, of how Mom's doing, of how she wished she could get Dad to come up from wherever he is. Of history and Medieval Europe and travelling the world. I'll be rich one day, I promise, and we'll go to England and Paris together.
She laughs.
Coffee first.
Always.
A sad smile as I take another sip of the coffee. I'm thirteen again, in the present, and the vanilla caramel coffee is in my hands. I take a long gulp to quench the tears. They fade away slowly, along with the lump in my throat.
I'm going to Paris one day, I promise, Grandmama.
She laughs.
Coffee first.