Recovery Coffee

Today my son has 30 days in recovery.  Today I have 22 yrs, 9 months, and 18 days in recovery.  This son of mine thinks I am full of it and not really all that bad.  Hate to live though bad as what I lived though was enough for me.  More than enough for anyone's lifetime.  I can remember thinking Coffee AWFUL stuff at meetings. 

Then I started to use it was more of a hand warmer than a drink.  Something to do with my hands.  That helped.  Coffee is cheaper than drinking Beer or at least it was back when I stopped.  Use to be able to buy a months worth of coffee for less than $10 dollars.  Yea and way back then I use to have only $10 per week for my husband's cigs.  Times have changed.   Coffee at meetings use to be better at some locations than others.  In the town I went to most of the meetings were in one location so the same coffee was used for all the meetings at that location. 

Once I found the cup I liked I took one to meetings.  The cup was tallish, large enough around to put my hands, while keeping them warm.  I started buying myself mugs for coffee and tea.  I like some mugs for camping, others for tea for my break on a spring day.  Other cups were for summer take outside and leave them or winter keep the coffee warm in the greenhouse, then there were some for other hot drinks like warm eggnog or herb teas for the evenings in the winter by the hearth.  Then we built a home without a fireplace or wood stove.  Oh, how I was living the good life.  No wood to haul, no wood to stack, no wood to split, not having to have a wood shed was a big deal to me.   No more boots to dry and care for after we did the wood run.  Oh the freedom, I felt. 

I lived.  I learned how much coffee to drink. 

Yea, had to learn not to drink too much coffee, then I had to wean myself off coffee after I married Old Army Man as he likes the smell of coffee, but will not drink the stuff or kiss me if I have been drinking the stuff.  I liked my morning kisses so I just let coffee fall to the wayside.   I do drink coffee during tax season as well, I need to be awake and up and going for hours on end.  The drugs I take for ailments have me sleeping 10-11 hours a day without coffee to keep me from napping.  I start to creep up on my cups of coffee until I get a bit jittery then I need to back off and tell the boss, hey I need to sleep here. 

 

I miss having coffee around a campfire of an evening or early morning.  I miss the scout troop I use to go camping with also.  The leader was a bear of a man, big, loud, funny, loved to show the kids how things were done before the turn of the century.  The kids made rope, started fires with simple things one could find or had in your pockets in the woods.  How to cook and how to love the outdoors.  They went so many places, they had so much fun on the rafting trips, the summer camps where they had horse camps and night rides camp outs.  These activities kept me sober.  I learned to live a life with out bars, beer, and drugs.  Real friends not drinking buddies, not drinking because I was sad I had no real friends any longer. 

 

What does coffee mean to me?  Coffee is hope.  Coffee means a future.  Coffee means loving behavior, caring behavior, kindness in a cup.  The smell of coffee in the morning as Grandma who raised me in the summers as I was growing up was so refreshing.  It was the love I felt, the being cared for by someone who took the time to care for me.  Not because she had to, but because she wanted me to learn how to be like her.  I learned to work yarn to the smell of coffee, I learn to embroidery to the smell of coffee.  I learned to pack a lunch to the smell of coffee.  I learned to do the banking and the books to the smell of coffee.  Coffee smell is so refreshing at times.   Can you feel it hugging you when you enter a room after not smelling coffee for a while?  Me too. 

 I started to drink coffee while in college.  My parents did not drink coffee.  I now drink coffee in fancy glasses, mugs, paper cups, plastic cups, iced in heavy tall cups. 

 

I would love to say coffee solved so many problems.  I had stopped drinking.  Less problems of my own making thank the Lord!  That did not clean up the mess I had made in my life or the mess less messy.  I cleaned up some of my messes, some I out lived.  Others just went away before I got around to cleaning them up.  I took one son to Eagle Scout, one to Life.  I learned my way with my sons and though those men who were men more than I think my sons did.  I learned what a man should do and how he acted.  How he took the good and the bad and did not hit/kick, batter strike kick out of bed, yell at, leave blame the wife for the problems.  It was eye opening as my first cup of coffee in the morning. 

Learned men could drink or not drink for months or even years.  I learned these men liked coffee but did not drink it 24/7 like my first husband did during his sober attempts.  I learned a great deal more about what a man should do then maybe I wanted as I was upset by how my roll models and male leadership roles where jerks more than men at times.  Eye opening to say the least.  I now go out on a cool morning with my tin cup in hand to keep those hands warm, the cup does not break and I can put it anywhere and the livestock really have not broken it yet like they have the plastic mugs.   I hope to keep up the good things I learned.  I learned what I wanted in a husband so when the first husband died I knew there was more to life than what I had in the first marriage.   Good yes there was some, bad lots of that, sad even more sadness for hopes lost, decades lost, joy dampened down.  Now it all is different because I learned to pick a man who respects me, loves me thick or thin-physically, emotionally or financially- I am loved.  I get treated like a queen and the hurt has gone away.  I cannot get back those years I lost to drinking, but I can live my life forward one day at a time.  My dream of a small farm, a loving husband, dogs asleep at my feet, cows in the fields.  Chickens on order, ducks in their duck run area.  Greenhouse part way built, garden tunnels supplies on the ground.  I am living.  I am alive.  To think I started with a Coffee in my hands. 

 

Thank you for your time.  Thank you for reading.  Thank you for me for being me today. 

 

Take care and you all come back now you hear. 

 

Ol' Mossback