This morning I was given a special chance to take coffee over to my parents house to have a cup of coffee with Grandpa. Grandpa is staying with my parents for the next couple of days and when he was packing his things he forgot his coffee pot. It was a real treat for me though. I guess I should give a little background here;
My grandfather and I have never been close, he has never really been close to anyone his whole life. He grew up on a farm in a very poor family. He had one brother, Harry, who is older then he is, and a sister who is younger then him. Last night over dinner I asked him what dinners were like when he was a kid. He told me that his family was too poor to have variety in their diets, and every night they had the same thing. Fried potatoes, sweet corn, and applesauce. It was all home grown on the farm. He told me that when he was lucky there would be meat on his plate. He would have to take turns with his brother on who got the helping of meat that night, as there was not enough to go around. This just seemed so strange to me.
As I was growing up my grandfather and I never had a conversation alone. He didn’t know how to talk to a kid, and I didn’t have much interest in talking to him. He was always so boring to me. His house didn’t have any toys to play with and the tv was always turned off. It wasn’t until i was in my adult years that we started talking. Now that we do talk, I find it to be a great privilege to talk with him. His old age has softened his hard exterior. He still throws cuss words around like he is paid by the word, but his mean streak is all but gone.
so back to this morning :D
I arrived at the house about 7:15 to find him sitting at the table. I had a large cup of highlander grog for him that I had gotten at our locally owned coffee shop here in town, and had a small Chai latte for myself. The first thing he did after I sat them down was pick mine up and look at the plastic sip through lid that we all know. “What in the hell is on top of this thing” he exclaimed. I laughed, even with his gout ridden leg and eyes still swollen from sleep he was himself. I told him it was the top of the drink and you can drink through it or take it off. He scoffed at it and took his seat at the table. I grabbed a green coffee mug from the cabinet and sat with him. He smiled at me and said “you don’t think i’m going to drink out of that white thing do ya?” I slid the mug across the table to him and we exchanged laughs. I poured his coffee into the mug and told him to try it. “I know it’s not folgers pap” I said to him, I tease him about the burnt mud he drinks all the time. He quickly snapped back at me and said “whats a fella got to do to get a little toast around here”, I laughed again and got up to make his toast. While my back was turned he picked up my cup and took a drink, mind you through that “white thing” he refused to drink out of just moments before. “God damn, what is in that coffee” he exclaimed “I hope it’s not as bad coming out as it was going in”. This made me laugh, deep and loud. I told him it wasn’t coffee at all, it’s chai tea, and I reminded him that it was good. “nah, coffee is coffee and candy is candy” he said. I have heard this phrase my whole life from him at family gatherings. He means that coffee should be black, and the sugar should be saved for candy. Remnant of his poor farmer childhood I assume.
At this point the toast was done, and as I took my seat at the table again we exchanged looks. He in his matching top to bottom flannel pajamas, the kind that have buttons running down the front of the shirt, and me in my old worn jeans and black rockabilly band tshirt I got at a car show. The decades between our lives melting away over a cup of coffee. It was a moment that I’ll never forget I think.
We sat in quiet for what seemed like a minute or two, and after taking a long drink of his black coffee he looked at me and said “yep critter, you have always loved coffee”. I smiled as he told me stories of the time in my life when my mom would drop me off at his house in the mornings and he would take me to school. Grandma Nevaeh was still alive then, they were good times. He told me about how every morning I would ask Nevaeh if I could have a cup of coffee, and how I would never drink it but I would put it up to my mouth. “must-a thought you were foolin someone”, he said to me.
I had forgoten about that. My grandma nevaeh died when I was young, but just the mention of her name will fill my eyes with tears. I loved her.
Conversation was flowing now, and our cups were emptying quickly. I told him that I’ll soon have a job at a coffee house. That started it all. He took his last bite of toast and told me that if he was going to say what he was about to say he was going to need more toast. As I got up to make it for him, he started telling me about his life. I thought I had a good idea of what it was like from the stories handed down through the family but I soon realized there were a lot of gaps in my idea. He told me about being young, and not wearing shoes. He told me that he can still remember his first cup of coffee. He had stolen it on a cold winter morning while his mom was in the pantry. “It wasn’t much, but it was enough” he told me, “my mom turned around just in time to see me take the last swaller….talk about a women who could reach across entire rooms to smack you across the mouth with the back and then the front of her hand”. I couldn’t help but laugh to myself. He then went on to tell me about how he and his brother had their mom’s old stove top pot, the one that he himself fixed after she threw it out, hidden in the rafters of the barn. He said that he would wake up about 4 in the morning in the summer and go down to milk the cows, when he was finished the would take the cream into their mother but only after spilling just a little into a bucket. After breakfast he, his brother, and his sitter would run into the woods that separated his house from the 85 acres of field. There they all had jobs to do. He would start a small fire, his brother would run and get the pot and the bucket that had the cream in it, and his sister would take the used grounds that she had gotten while helping her mother clean up after breakfast from her coffee pot. He said they would heat up the water and put the coffee grounds in the old broken pot and brew up some of the weakest coffee he had ever had. They would sit on logs and drink it right out of the pot. “we were hot shit” he said and smiled in the way that I have come to know as distinctly him.
At this point he was on his last cup, and mine had long run out. I was so absorbed by his stories that I had forgotten about his toast, and he refused to eat it because it was cold. I told him that I couldn’t let good food go to waste so I sat down with the toast and started to eat it.
He went on to tell me about how his life changed through the years. Stores of his teen age years, working on the farm and then leaving the farm to deliver oil. All of them were centered around coffee though. It seems to me like coffee has been something special to him his whole life, and now that I’m grown and I can say the same thing about myself I kinda get where it came from.
While it’s not the strongest bond grandfather and grandson can share, our bond is growing. He is now in the last years of his life, and I find that saddening. I have seen him turn from a very hard, and aggressive man, into a frail soft man who just wants someone to talk to. He has outlived three different wives, a few wars, and the great depression. He has seen the rise and fall of communism, paid 12 cents a gallon for gas, and owned a radio, record player, eight track player, televison without and then with cable. This man has stories to tell.
I’ll be going back tomorrow morning for some more coffee with him, He made sure of that. I am looking forward to it.
