For my dad’s Barista friends

Even as a kid, I understood that coffee was cool. Over steaming mugs of Folgers, my parents and grandparents, our neighbors and friends, talked and laughed. This coffee cult was exclusive: no kids allowed. And that alone made it mysterious and cool.

It will grow hair on your chest, my granddad used to tell me when I asked if I could partake. You can have children’s coffee, a milky consolation with lots of sugar, offered up–on special occasions–by my dad.

For years, I stood outside the coffee circle, envious of its sense of community. There were faculty wives’ coffees, neighborhood coffees, PTA coffees, Christmas and church coffees. At the center of these gatherings? Coffee. Pots and carafes of glorious coffee: Arabica, Columbian, French Roast, Italian Roast, Espresso, breakfast and desert coffee. And unfolding from this coffee center were spreads of cinnamon rolls, sweet breads, cookies–some straight out of the oven–and, of course, coffee cake in all its magnificent varieties.

The sanctuary of coffee is an inclusive one. All are welcome: mug or styrofoam-cup-drinkers; storebrand or coffee-shop-drinkers; hot and black, lukewarm, or day-old drinkers; fancy-real-creamers or generic-powdered- creamer-drinkers; one-cuppers or lost-count-cuppers. The coffee covenant is just this: you can drink before you work, before you talk, before you even begin to be.

At Baristas, a local coffee shop in my hometown, my dad and his philosophy friends have been gathering in the sanctuary of coffee for years. Grab your latte, espresso, capuccino, and take a seat. Open yourselves to the talk of the day. Stay as little or as long as you wish. And leave, knowing that the coffee is always on, and the table is always open.

This is the way of coffee. It brings us together in familiar and unfamiliar ways. It gives us a reason to gather and to stay. And, above all, it speaks a universal language.

Comedian Jerry Seinfeld said, You don’t really need a place. But you feel like you’re doing something. That is what coffee is. 

Exactly. You feel like you’re doing something when you’re in the sanctuary of coffee. And what could be better than that?