When I go home to visit my parents in the city that I grew up in – it doesn’t matter how old + gray I look or how tall my children have grown – around my mom and Paul, my father, I always turn back into the pigeon-toed, tongue-tied gangly-baby black sheep of the family. After years of going back, I’ve learned to counteract this phenomenon with good cups of hot coffee. I remain steadfast in my faith in this daily caffeinated ritual that I believe will get me through just about anything.

In my hometown — this begins with me getting up early and out of room #438 of the Best Western Hotel. I go down the elevator, run from the fluorescent lights of the lobby, cross the parking lot and Highland Avenue over to my favorite coffee shop. If I’m there before they open up – I wait in the pre-dawn shadows – sitting on the picnic table on the lawn of the abandoned yellow house next door – the one with an elm tree growing out of its front porch. I know this town, these streets, this air + light. I went to high school up the block, hung out with the soccer team at the Tavern on the corner, and got my first and only perm at Fannie’s Beauty Parlor down the street.

I believe it’s pure serendipity that this coffee shop across from the Best Western brews a thick strong drink – something I am partial to. When I’m inside their walls hung with cafe art, in this neighborhood where I still recognize the cracks in the sidewalks – and I order a cup of the day — I experience a grounding moment of mature anonymity — the kind that only dwells around the sanctity of caffeine + cinnamon buns. I actually feel like the adult that I’d like to think I’ve grown into – not the freckle-faced kid my parents see me as.

I want my coffee to be both a shock and sigh. I’m a firm believer in a good mug, that nothing else should to wake up my taste buds, and that it’s got to be more than just hot and black or taste like someone melted a crayola crayon in it. I don’t want to drink it on the run in a paper cup or Styrofoam. I like when it has just a whiff of driving past a dead skunk with the windows rolled down – sumac wet with dew – and that lingering taste of longing and desire. With cream it should turn the color of an oak leaf in autumn – a well-worn church pew. And I add a children’s teaspoon of sugar or maple syrup to slight the bitter.

In its wake my heart beats faster, my breath is quick, my tongue coated brown. The sun feels brighter and wind + rain more ominous. My thoughts – in a clear stream of consciousness flow with alert eloquence in and out of everything from the existence of god to the stinging pleasures of a hot shower. And then when I go to my parents’ house and they pour a cup of coffee for me at their kitchen table – I think that maybe they do see me as all grown up after all. And they’re older too, more frail but less afraid, and have a pretty good sense of humor about it all. And as always – they love me in their own particular way — and this – I’m only just beginning to understand.