Hot Coffee

It got cold here in the southern Rockies very fast this year. Well before Halloween we had several nights of sub freezing overnight temperatures, blackened zapped foliage, real snow, and chill winds. The leaves aren't even all down, and yet we have the furnace on and we're inside.

In this fall's frigidity my thoughts turn away from gardens and wine on the patio to . . .

                 . . . . hot coffee.

We got a new coffee maker.

OXO 9 cup drip coffee maker

We like our morning coffee. We like it simple -- drip grind, in a pot, kept warm for hours until two retirees decide to start their day about an hour before lunch. No Keurig, no pods, no copper embellished steamer basket cappuccino contraptions with foam. No flavors, no infusions, no hazelnut anything. No bells. No whistles.

No fancy cups, no clever sayings plastered on a mug, no fancy pottery inspired vessels, just white diner mugs.

No French press, although I have one, and occasionally like to use it. Just coffee staying hot in a pot all morning.

Everything I need

When we left Connecticut two years ago after almost seven decades living there and living nowhere else, the one household item that came with us was the coffee maker. The movers came to get our stuff, but we told them don't touch the coffee pot. We put it in the car with our suitcases and personal items and the only worldly goods we retained as we traveled, temporarily homeless, cross country to Santa Fe. The whole coffee maker appliance came with us in the car.

I look back on that now -- the coffee maker was such a totem, such a tangible symbol of the safety and comfort we were leaving behind as we uprooted our lives. Childhood pictures were packed and moved, furniture was shrink wrapped and stowed, mementos of our entire lives were loaded on a van, but the coffee pot came with us.

It's an appliance. It dies. New ones get bought.

And here we are, two years on, firmly and happily in our new home, and coffee is brewing in a brand new coffee maker. I can deal with the sudden cold and the too-early snows and the complete change in our lives -- I have fresh coffee brewing in a brand new coffee maker.