Mama's Milk

I was just online looking up how coffee was discovered. I had a hunch that it was discovered by mothers, and I had to laugh to see some story about Joe goatherd who saw his goats looking lively and took the berries to a medicine man.

Maybe, but I prefer to believe it was some Mama with a baby on her back, foraging for food, who ate some beans and suddenly her sleep deprived brain cleared. Miraculously, she found she could make it through a day of repetitive tasks and labour, and still be patient, loving, and entertaining. And, as Mamas will, she shared the magic bean with all the other Mamas, thus spreading it the world over. And to her, I am eternally grateful.

Maybe my appreciation the dark brew is stronger because I gave it up for a while. I’ve been drinking coffee, literally, since I can remember. All my mornings of high school and university began with a cup of coffee. I poured it out of rounded flasks while serving breakfast at the pancake house, an old thrift store pot in my first apartment, a bodum during my single living days. Finally I was pouring it from one of those 40-cup office things into a huge cup after cup while I struggled with brain death in my first and only cubicle job.

And then I started to get stomach pain, and feel sort of dark inside, as if my gut was getting coffee stained. So I gave it up—switched to green tea, with soy milk and organic cane sugar. I was happy with green tea for about 5 years. It was earthy, and so good for me. Coffee had turned me off, and I didn’t plan on going back.

And then I had a baby. Sweet, amazing baby with the smile that makes my heart leap with joy. But often at night, his alter ego comes out, waking up sometimes every hour--unsettled, cranky. I’m sure every Mama knows the feeling of waking up thinking “Noooooooooooooooooo.” You drag yourself out of bed, carrying the extra 20lbs of baby. Your head is in deep in a fog as you shove small bits of banana into your baby’s mouth, scraping dried up food from the floor below him whenever you bend to pick up the spoon he keeps dropping. His smile, buoyant as it is, makes you a little…nervous, as you wonder how you will keep up with this level of raw life-loving today?

And you sip your coffee. And after a while, you notice the fog is just--gone. It’s as if you slept 8 hours instead of 4. You feel sure you can make it to naptime, maybe even further. You’re ready to get on the floor and babble gibberish at the top of your lungs.

It’s that promise that has brought me back to coffee with a zealous appreciation. When I wake up in the morning and smell the pot on (dear hubby is usually up before me and baby, working from home) I inhale the promise of a good day. Sometimes when I fall off into exhausted sleep, praying to the Great Mother for a good night, I am also already thinking how good coffee will be in the morning.

Coffee is Mama’s milk. Every Mama whose home I visit has a pot of coffee on the go, or even an espresso machine on the counter. Cupholders on our strollers are more important than a hand brake, even, and maybe more useful, since we may be more quick to notice something like the stroller rolling into traffic.

So I salute that foraging Mama of my imagination, way back in time in Ethiopia, who dared to discover those beans. I hope her soul is resting somewhere with her feet up, sipping a warm cup of Java.