What is one of your favorite drinks?

Coffee hands down. It greets me every morning, comforts me in the dark and lifts me out of the groggiest states of mind. 

I was late to the coffee world. In my early twenties I lived for a while with a couple and their two year old. They were big coffee drinkers. Not only that, but they drank French roast- black. Which at the time, in the mid-seventies, was kind of exotic. They ground it themselves and had one of the first Chemex. Then they would sit in their sunroom and quietly sigh with relief. 

I did not get it. I thought coffee was bitter. The only coffee I ever liked were the sips I had of my mom’s iced coffee when I was little. She let me finish her glass with a straw that rested in the undisolved sugar. It was kind of like coffee ice cream. But hot coffee  with no sugar or cream?!? Why? 

They would marvel I could wake up without it. I said I would never drink it in my life. 

And then a year and half later we had our first child. They came to visit and brought their arsenal of coffee. I was exhausted and lived in a fog. They poured me a cup and I never looked back.