Recently, my high school-age teenagers have taken up the ritual of coffee-drinking. I’m not exactly sure how or when or why this happened, but now it is trips to the Starbucks with their friends and even pouring a cup from the kitchen pot on those mornings when I’ve made some (I am not an every day coffee-drinker, I actually drink more tea–but sometimes, only coffee will do.) One of my daughter’s actually got a pound of fancy, flavored coffee for Christmas. Since when we they old enough (and not disgusted by the smell or taste) to drink coffee?!!
It is a little disconcerting to watch your baby pouring and doctoring up a cup of coffee. Okay, I admit they are no longer babies and two of them are as tall as their decently tall mother–but still, next to ordering alcohol in pubic, sauntering up and getting a cup of coffee seems to be a major growing-up rite of passage. I’m not sure I’m completely comfortable with it yet.
It is weird to hear them talking about how they “like their coffee” and commenting on whether the pot I have made for my own consumption is any good or not. It’s just one of those little seemingly ordinary daily activities that reminds us are kids are, in fact, growing up, and there’s really nothing we can do to stop them!
I remember my own high school days in the mid-eighties–how cool I felt going to a little coffee shop with my friends and sitting around little cafe tables arranged of shiny black and white floor towels. We’d chat and debate and philosophize with the genuine intensity of teenagers–discussing communism and apartheid (it was the eighties after all) and making plans for the weekend. Now coffee has become a utilitarian necessity to get me going on rough days.
But, another generation is upon us–I guess I just have to get used to the fact that my kids are actually old enough to drink coffee…