By Eleanor Kazdan, circa 2012 — I think I first drank coffee when I was 17. It was instant coffee. When I was a child, the only time that my parents made coffee was when they had company. The pot percolated joyfully on the stove, awaiting their arrival. I seem to remember drinking instant coffee with my boyfriend when I was 17, with milk and a teaspoon of sugar.
When I was 19, my friend Kathy and I went to Europe and discovered coffee — real coffee. Actually, it was only me. Kathy already drank espresso with milk every morning. It was part of her Hungarian heritage. [In] France, Spain, Austria, and Italy we felt very sophisticated drinking our café au lait. In France, from a bowl sometimes brought to our room on the fifth floor by the hotelier, big steaming bowls of coffee to wake us from our reverie of yesterday’s adventures.
When we got back to Toronto, Kathy and I continued to drink coffee on special days together at the coffee mill. I always ordered a cappuccino, savoring the moment the bitter liquid surfaced from the deliciousness of frothy milk, a moment of sensory awakening. Still, I never made coffee. Then, when I was 21, I met the love of my life. He lived in a room on a small street in Toronto and had very few possessions except a mattress, boxes of LP records — that’s very old-fashioned now — and a Melitta coffee maker. I soon learned the joys of grinding your own coffee, smelling the pungent aroma, and watching the hot liquid drip slowly into the pot.
