Hey, coffee friends!
How's your week going? How much of those beans do you still have in the bag? And how much filtering have you given your coffee lately?
Today I've come to spillthebeans once more. I think it's good you can do this from time to time. For me, it's a way to reduce stress, you know, to release some steam, like a kettle does when you've heated it enough.
Chamomile, then linden, then valerian tea. We used the coffee filters to make her herbal teas. We continued with passiflora and Bach flowers which seemed to work for a couple of weeks; then it was sleeping pills. Grandma was very old and her old body and her old insomnia seemed to laugh at all our futile efforts to help her--help us--sleep, so we stopped listening to all her complaints, which lately were more and also occurred more frequently. One day the only teenager in the family said to her, "Grandma, one of these days you're going to have a stroke!" And what do you think happened. Grandma Trina got an instant stroke; like instant coffee, just add hot water. Done in a minute.
After half a day in the hospital, the doctor discharged her--yes, so soon!--. Grandma was handed over to us half asleep, quietly, along with a medical prescription, and I felt like being handed over a run over and doped puppy. The list of medications was long. We had to hurry to get all those medicines, since the matter promised that we would finally sleep peacefully, at least for a few days. Whatever cocktail she had been given was a blessing, or so we thought.
After a couple of hours, we finally got home with all of grandma's meds. Granny was asleep. The house felt at peace. "Want some coffee, aunt?" Said Julian; our good maker of strokes was also our maker of good coffee. Oh, but we'd run out of coffee filters, and Julian didn't have a clue of how our old and forgotten moka pot worked. "Leave it to me, honey," I replied.
While I was washing the moka pot, I realized Julian had turned the coffee maker on. Though I was skeptical about the procedure and potential result, it was clear he had managed to make the coffee maker work without a filter. I set the moka pot anyways. The more coffee, the merrier, right?
"You think I don't know I'm a burden, but I do, and that's what makes me cranky; makes me complain, girl... I'm old and on Tramadol; what's your excuse?" The electric coffee maker continued to speak naturally and bitterly while brewing the hot, lumpy coffee, darker than usual and with a malicious tone. I had not realized it was it--she?--I filled the chamber with water, the basket with ground coffee, I screwed... The flame was too high; I put the moka pot on the stove and watched how the flame played with the plastic handle while heating it too much, too much but not enough to get me out of my stupor. The coffee maker went on... "I'm crippled, too much to be my old self, too much to make coffee myself without a decent filter, let alone with no filter at all; these many years I've lived and this pain and my old bones are my excuse, but what's yours when you resent my uselessness? I'm old and on Tramadol, so I speak too much only to regret half of what I said when I become lucid again."
The coffee in the pot was about to boil as remembered all the awful things we had said. Old Trina had been listening more than we thought.
The black lumps in the dark, rarefied liquid in the carafe suddenly began to give off a delicious aroma. It was coffee, although no one could've drunk it. I went to Grandma's bed and made space between the boxes, jars and blister packs on the bedside table; there I placed the cup of steaming coffee, full of lumps. It didn't matter; she couldn't drink it anyway, but the aroma made her sleepy face smile. She opened one eye and looked at me as if winking and said in a sweet tone, "I think you need that filter more than I do, girl." The lumps had settled and the coffee looked calm and provocative. I took a sip and it was delicious, more than the one I almost let burn in the moka pot.
Thank you so much for your visit :)
