Sunday Coffee

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

~T.S. Eliot                                        

Every Sunday that we weren't hung over, Bugs and I went to Stumptown for coffee. He didn't have to be at work, a respected wine shop in SoDo, until 11 so I would doze, listening to him shower and then watching him roll up the sleeves of a wrinkled button-up shirt. Around the time he selected a jaunty cap from the hat hooks in our bedroom, I would spring out of bed and hurriedly pull on jeans and tie back my messy hair. Leaving our apartment to round the block to P-Town (as the sign proclaimed from our point of view), he'd ask me if I had my keys. I did.

We took turns buying each other nonfat lattes, the best in town. I added raw sugar to mine; he never did. I always finished mine; he rarely did. He'd sip, but sometimes I think he just liked to hold the cup on his way to work, even though it was surely cold by then. 

Sometimes I'd feel whimsical and order a raspberry latte with a raspberry donut hole. 

Sometimes I brought my laptop or a novel I was engrossed in, but usually we read the New York Times together. Sometimes, if I was caught up writing or reading, I'd linger at our table after he left for work, watching people come in and out until I felt antsy and knew it was time to return home. But usually I'd walk with him to the bus stop or down the hill to the freeway, kiss him good-bye and then turn around and march back up the hill, looking forward to my little solitary Sunday.

Little, yes. The world seemed much smaller only a few short months ago. Is that what repetition does? Calm and comfort us as we slip into stagnation, letting our views of the world shrink? 

The last time I saw Bugs, five months ago, I was wearing latex gloves. Having agreed to help me clean the apartment formerly known as ours, he dutifully moved the fridge and oven so I could scrub away the splattered grease of over five hundred dinners. We sprayed and wiped up the sad, furniture-void spaces and said good-bye. There were no kisses and he left his keys behind. 

I haven't seen him since then but I'm going to today. For Sunday morning coffee before he goes to work.

The venue has changed. We're meeting at the Top Pot near my new apartment, where I've become addicted to the spicy chai. Today I think I'll get something new and chocolate covered and a cup of drip for dunking. I've been working my way through Top Pot's repertoire of donuts and so far the apple fritter, blueberry bulls-eye and chocolate-covered old fashioned are my favorites. It's good to mix things up sometimes. Though there's comfort, of course, in revisiting the old standards, those maple bars and rainbow-sprinkled pleasures of the past.