College of Arts & Sciences > Department of English > Student Resources > Awards & Scholarships > 2007 Winning Essay
2007 essay Contest Winner
The Art of Kaffe
An empty cup of coffee is like a blank canvas. An artist can map out every stroke, every colour, every line they will use, before touching anything. Staring at the canvas, they envision a picture before one drop of paint is put to the cloth, like a coffee connoisseur envisions the perfect blend before a drop touches their lips.
I was seven. Even at that age I wanted to act older than I was. I was glued to my mother’s hip, sitting in on conversations between her, my grandmother, and great grandmother, constantly trying to understand their little chats all masked by their German tongue. I always had a smile on my face as if to portray the message that I was interested in their topics or that I understood what they were saying. Every Sunday the entire family would load up into our gold 1994 Honda Accord to go visit my Oma. "Mom, I’m tired of going to Oma’s house. I can’t understand her," my sister and I would proclaim as we drove the 37 minutes to her house. As much as I detested going to her house, afterwards there was always this feeling of reluctant satisfaction. We could always tell we were close to her house by the aroma from the Nestle factory; she lived just five minutes away from there. That smell was unlike any other. It was smooth, warm, rich, and full of something I could not yet grasp at that age. Every time we passed, there was this mystifying persona it held. It was familiar, and yet so foreign. Something was missing but I couldn’t quite place what it was.
This particular visit to my Oma’s house had been unexpected. The night before my Oma had had a dream about someone walking into her room with a bright light. She couldn’t see because the light was so blinding. All she could make out was a dark figure appearing before her. When she rustled the sheets to get a better look, the dark figure turned, startled, and walked out. She was terrified. She called my mother earlier that morning we rushed over. They had a cup of coffee and some cake she had baked at 4:30 that morning. They talked for hours, pot after pot of coffee brewing, as I sat there, still on cup one, trying to swallow it down without looking like I was going to hurl, loading it with teaspoon of sugar after the next.
Finally, after three pots of coffee and a late dinner with a glass of red wine, my mom was off. "Andriah," she turned to me, "Why don’t you stay with Oma tonight? Keep her company. She would like that."
I looked back and saw the wrinkled lady waving. Despite the hours of conversation, I could still see the distress in her face. "But I can’t speak German. How are we going to talk?"
"Honey, that doesn’t matter. You and your grandmother have more in common than you may realize. Please? For me?"
I didn’t really want to, but I agreed nonetheless. The thought of not being able to talk to someone in order to communicate seemed too abstract for my youthful mind. As I waved to my mother driving off, I couldn’t help but feel an immediate regret of the decision.
"Andriah! Shut the door!" I heard the fragile woman cry out in her native tongue, and I shut the door. I could hear the clanking of her walking stick hit the tile, as she hobbled off around the corner into her living room, still with her glass of red wine, always with a glass of red wine. It was time for the news. I walked in and she didn’t seem to notice, couldn’t hear me most likely, and sat down on the leather couch, mildly decorated with two pillows at each end and a stuffed black cat in the middle. The couch was old and the leather was already cracking. She had tried to cover it with a long blanket, but you couldn’t sit down without it coming out of the corners where she tucked it in at. She sat there, glued to the screen, as talk of the Pope was getting intense. I wasn’t very interested in the news, so all I could do was stare blankly at the television screen. I could slowly start to feel myself drift off. I wished I were at my house, sitting on my own un-cracked couch watching cartoons with my sister.
I must have dozed off for a long time; I was awoken by the sound of clanking. I turned and my Oma was shutting the door of the living room. She turned towards me and I pretended I was still asleep. She walked over to me and placed a green, white, and red crocheted blanket on top of me and then bent down and kissed my head. "Goodnight my child. Sleep well," she said softly in German, or rather, I think she said, and then walked off to turn in herself.
I woke to the sun hitting my face through the tiny holes in her shutters. I rolled over to get back to sleep but the smell of streusel kuchen in the oven, fresh brotchen, and the familiar scent of the Nestle factory kept me from my slumber. The clock said 5:39am, I’ve never been up this early, I thought, and wondered how long Oma had been up, considering it takes a long time to make a cake smell like that. I walked into her little kitchen, no bigger than a walk-in closet. It was a bit drafty and my feet were freezing against the tile. "Ah! Good morning my child. Did you sleep well?" I nodded and gave her a hug. We sat down at her tiny bread table used as her coffee table, and her dining room table. She had a cup of coffee already waiting at her seat and was adding her crème and sugar. She pulled out a huge bag of medicine and vitamins, starting popping her daily doses, and took them with her coffee. "Would you like a cup of coffee?" she asked me. Again, I nodded, to be polite. She hobbled up and placed a ceramic cup with a green flower and yellow dots representing at stem in front of me. Her hand gripped tightly around the handle of the pot. I watched her gracefully pour the dark liquid into the cup; the steam arising from the top, the lighter shades of brown swirl as she poured the crème; the bubbles coming up as she dropped two cubes of sugar in. She did it with eloquence, with such emotion, I felt in awe of the care she placed into making coffee. Not just making it, but creating it: the perfect cup of coffee. Every move had a meaning, special, and requiring the utmost care and precision. She was an artist, painting her cup of coffee, creating something so profound and beautiful.
We had our coffee with a piece of bread smeared with butter. She sat across from me and explained how to bake her famous streusel kuchen, making me repeat everything she said in German to make sure I understood. After the bread, we had cake. She then tried to teach me how to say fork and knife, spoon, table, chair, etc. Time had been suspended and it seemed that if I left the kitchen it would start ticking again. It had become our temporary world.
My Oma got up and pulled out a sack of potatoes from underneath her stove and an extra peeler. We had to get ready for the day (and her reputable potato salad), and she handed me the extra peeler. "Like this," she exclaimed, showing me the proper way to peel a potato. After a few minutes of peeling, she had finished at least nine while I was on my second or third one. She made puppets out of the potatoes and made voices for the different characters. My grandmother had a sense of humor? Seeing this fragile, wrinkled, shapely old lady sitting across from me, playing with potatoes, was hilarious. I laughed so hard I couldn’t feel my ribs; we were both in tears.
After we finished the potatoes, we sat there and waited for them to boil. She reached her hand across the table and grabbed mine. She held it for a while with a grin on her face, nodding. "I love you my child," her voice cracking a bit.
"Me too, Oma." I got up and gave a slight kiss on her cheek. Her hair smelled of perfumed soap and Nivea cream, she was lightly spritzed with her lemony 47/11 perfume. Her cheek was cool, wrinkled, and strangely smooth. I guess I always pictured old people having rough skin. Not her. She was soft, tender. Our hands intertwined, and that silly grin on her face, we shared a moment of understanding. It was our moment of understanding-- of growing. Time had frozen and I was completely consumed. We were further, and deeper, than language.
I heard the front door open. "Hello?!" The familiar voice of my mother. The door was shut and her footsteps neared and I knew that as soon as she opened the kitchen door, time would exist once again. And in a blink, it was over. "Yohhh whoo? Hello Oma. Good morning sweetheart."
"Kuchen und kaffe?" my grandmother offered and at that, another pot of coffee was brewed. I listened as they talked, occasionally catching the corner of my grandmother’s eyes, a twinkle followed by the raise of a cup.
The ride home was long and quiet. I was disappointed to see my mother. I felt that I’d gone my whole life without knowing my Oma and now after all that’s happened between us, I had to leave? My mother asked me about the night and what we did that morning. I started to tell her and in mid-sentence that scent appeared. The aroma that I could never place before was right there, right here all along. Coffee took on a whole new meaning for me. It was no longer this nasty, brown, chalky water that grown ups drank; it had become my understanding to her. It became something we did together, the one thing that would bind just us on every Sunday and everyday thereafter.
A few years after that, my Oma had a stroke and was placed in a nursing home. She was no longer able to drink coffee or have her glass of red wine before bed. A few months after that, we moved. From that point on, life consisted of no more Sundays, no more of her famous cooking and no more sitting at her tiny kitchen table. We occasionally would visit, once a year, but it was never the same. The distance made it extremely difficult.
The longer we were apart, the more coffee I drank. It’s strange to hear myself say that, but it was the only thing we shared. I could always be with her, again, in that moment, that morning we spent in her kitchen. She passed a few years ago and I couldn’t make it to her funeral. My grandmother was with her when she passed. When she returned home she handed me a small box. "What is this?" I asked.
"Oma wanted you to have these," she responded in a calm tone.
Later, I opened the box. Wrapped in old, German newspapers were the coffee glasses my Oma and I used so many years ago. I decided, since I couldn’t be there with her, then I would at least do something to remember her by. I woke up the next morning at 5:39am. I placed the filter in the coffee pot, scooped three big tablespoons of Beste Bonne Geld Kaffe, filled the pot with water and poured it into the machine. I watched as it filled with one tiny dark brown drop at a time. The aroma slowly consumed the room as memories flooded my mind. I watched as the steam came from the top of the machine and listened to the persistent beep, indicating it was ready. I took down a cup, part of the set we had used that morning, and as I poured in my crème and then two tea spoons of sugar I thought of her delicate touch, the grace she possessed as she created her cup of coffee every morning. I sat outside silently and watched as the day unfolded in front of me. The sun came up and passed through the leaves, the light in the slits of her shutters. The scent pillowing from my coffee reminded me of the sweet cake, the fresh bread, and the heavy butter smell that emulated from her tiny kitchen. I looked down into the cup and watched as the creme swirled around and I knew it was complete. That morning she had finished her painting; she was signing her name in the bottom right hand corner, titling it- the Art of Kaffe.