Kettle and Cup

Some Days are Like That

by Marye on March 1st, 2008

Did you ever have one of those days? I am having one. I got up to my computer making the “Marye I have Flatlined” sound again. Yep..crashed. Marc could not coax it back to life before he headed to work. That means that I have no access to my images, my photo software, or my links…I am on the kids computer, which runs slower and is not at my desk. Whine.

Just when I thought I was going to lose it my friend Juanita came by and said, “Hey, Iw as praying for yout oday and the Lord told me to come get you and take you to Starbucks”.

Yay God. I am glad He is looking out for me because honestly, I need it. So we went and I cried and drank coffee.

Things seem a bit better coming home caffeinated but not better enough to actually be able to write at this keyboard. Anne of Green Gables needed just a certain kind of nib on her pen to write letters, and I apparently need just a certain kind of keyboard to blog properly.

There is just something rejuvenating about coffee, though. When the quilting bee went out of vogue kaffe klatches came in. I can remember my mom, and the other neighbor women (I feel like I should write it, wimmin) sitting in the kitchen in the afternoons, snacking on a piece of fresh coffee cake and drinking cups of fragrant coffee. It was a time for them to give each other support, and empathize with each other..a time to renew themselves and receive counsel. They went home to begin dinner and their evening chores refreshed.

Maybe that is what Starbucks provides for us now. A place to renew and refresh, to consider who we are and how we got that way. Our homes don’t seem to be the refuges that they once were, maybe the internet, working at home, and t.v. took that away, but look around any Starbucks on any day and you will see people kaffe klatching along with those making business deals.

I kind of miss the warmth and comfort of the kitchen. I wonder how it would be to invite neighbors to a kaffe. What would it be like to serve aromatic coffee from a percolator with a big slice of homemade cake? To sit in a shiny kitchen and watch the red checked curtains blow in the breeze?

We have gained alot with our modern lives. The ability to work at home, to blog, to shop on the internet…but we have lost the smell of sun dried sheets, the sounds of the percolator as the coffee perks to perfection. We have lost the sense of community we once had as the small neighborhood became global.

Eh, nothing earth shattering today. No cool links. Just the thought that somehow our lives are much less rich than they once were and it has nothing to do with gas prices or the economy, with the president, or the war. We have given up the freedom of simplicity in our quest for bigger and better, and more important. And maybe it is gone forever, with no way to get it back.

So I am left wondering, is Starbucks a good replacement for the kitchens of the past? Or is it just another way of keeping our distance, or not letting people see who we really are? Ideas? Thoughts?

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POSTED IN: Coffee, memories