In the days before the pandemic, I would occasionally duck out of the office in the midafternoon and pedal the three miles west and then north to meet My Lovely Wife at the most popular coffee shop. We’d enjoy a beverage together while pecking away at our laptops. It was more of a routine occurrence on the weekends. Around 2 p.m., the sun would begin to peek with the skylight in MLW’s studio and create a glare on her screen — an indication from the heavens that it was time to seek a change of scenery — sending her downstairs with her backpack in tow and an invitation to join her for a cup.
I’d generally tag along, more to have an excuse to climb on my small bike than for the allure of coffee-shop culture. Like MLW, I’m a morning tea drinker by nature, and, unlike her, I couldn’t quite realise why people would go out of their way to set up shop in a cacophonous caffeine parlor and spend $5 for a dose of java. Only if that outlet became unavailable was I in a position to discern its real attraction: It’s all about the ritual.
A week or so into our now monthlong confinement, MLW ordered a bag of beans from your now-shuttered coffee purveyors. While she waited for that shipment, a lovely pot and matching dripper arrived in the mail. A few days later, I discovered her in the kitchen preparing the beans for brewing with our hand-grinder — a culinary process that doubles like a fabulous upper-body workout.
She heated water within the tea kettle and carefully poured it over the grounds in the dripper. The aroma drifted across the kitchen to my outpost near the sink. “You’ve become a barista,” I observed.
“I’m just making coffee,” she replied. “Want some?”
“Thanks, however i think I’ll pass.”
The next day, when the sun had made its method to her skylight, MLW was again down in the kitchen area heating water and grinding beans. “Can one help you with that?” I ventured.
She handed me the small glass container attached to the medieval cranking mechanism, and I spent the next several minutes attempting to hold the contraption in place while turning the beans right into a powder. I could feel the sweat beading upon my brow. “I’m going to want a cold beer, not hot coffee, when I’m done with this,” I huffed.
I settled for many version of a café au lait, that we dutifully sipped (I’m more of an espresso guy) in the end chatted at the dining room table. The following day, I ordered my own bag of beans.
Meanwhile, we gradually settled into our afternoon coffee klatch. MLW baked a loaf of banana bread and I studied the workings in our ancient Italian espresso pot. Once the beans finally showed up within the mailbox, I tried unsuccessfully to contain my enthusiasm. “They’re here!” I cried, as though announcing guests. “Let’s have coffee!”
The novelty of espresso brewing has since worn a bit thin (though my lattes have proven surprisingly palatable), however the ritual has endured. Every afternoon between 2 and 3, we seem to find inside us the kitchen cranking through the grinder workout, boiling water, frothing milk, and admiring the outcomes of our labor. But it’s not really about the coffee anymore. It’s be a brief slice of the day that reminds us that every day life is more than work and worry.
“Ritual is an ancient and inextricable part of human nature,” writes University of Connecticut anthropology professor Dimitris Xygalatas, PhD, in The Conversation. “And while it may take many forms, it remains a powerful tool for promoting resilience and solidarity. Inside a world of ever-changing variables, ritual is a much-needed constant.”
Someday the plague will lift, the coffee houses will reopen, the sun will be sending its glare on MLW’s computer screen, and we’ll probably once again rendezvous at a place where somebody helps make the coffee for us. But not quite as often as in the past. Maybe we’ll occasionally decide to craft our own cups, reserve our cares, and revisit the ritual beyond the days of our confinement.
Part of me really likes that idea. The other part really wants to buy an electric grinder.