Rachel’s Coffee Mug

To all appearances, mine is a mundane existence, the same routine seven days a week 365 days a year. That would be misleading, because I have Rachel in my world and she makes everything exciting. She is the reason I do not fall out of the cupboard and break into a thousand pieces.

Everyday, five days a week, the alarm goes off at precisely 4 a.m. She gets up, staggers into the kitchen, takes me out of the cabinet above the microwave and sets me by the coffee maker. Then she pours the water into the reservoir, removes yesterday’s coffee grounds, fills the basket with five scoops of new grounds, and turns the coffee maker on. Once this is accomplished, she goes into the bathroom to prepare herself for the day.

As I wait patiently for the coffee to brew, I listen to the noises coming from the bathroom. I hear the shower come on and then, a few seconds later she begins to sing. Everyday she sings the same song that echoes through the house. I want to sing along with her as she intones, “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. You make me happy when skies are gray. Nobody knows dear how much I love you. Please don’t take my sunshine away.”

After finishing in the bathroom, she goes outside to pick up the newspaper and then she returns to the kitchen. Rachel, her blue eyes sparkling and her graying hair still damp, puts a blueberry bagel in the toaster, gets the chocolate cream cheese out of the refrigerator and pours hot coffee into me. This is my favorite part of the day because we sit at the breakfast bar together.

As I watch her, she eats her bagel and reads the newspaper. At random intervals, she sips coffee from my body, spreads more cream cheese onto a section of her bagel or gets up to pour more of that delicious seaming liquid into me. After her third or fourth cup of coffee, she turns off the coffee, puts the empty bagel saucer in the dishwasher, washes me in the sink, dries me, and places me back in the cupboard.

There I wait, remembering her soft hands holding my body and the feel of her ruby lips on my rim. She returns home late in the afternoon and takes the Santa Clause mug from the cupboard. She pours the remainder of the morning’s coffee in and heats it in the microwave. When she finishes the coffee and her supper, she rinses the mug and places it back in the cupboard. This is my... our routine Monday through Friday.

On Saturday, the routine changes slightly. On Saturday and Sunday, she still gets up at 4 a.m. and removes me from the cupboard. However, on these days she takes a bag of coffee beans out of the freezer. She fills the reservoir of the coffee maker as usual, but then she grinds the coffee beans. The fresh ground beans and brewing coffee fills the house with the most savoring aroma I have ever experienced.

After her shower and first cup of black coffee, she opens a can of hot chocolate mix. Rachel puts three tablespoons of the coco powder into me and then pours in the coffee. She puts her laptop on the kitchen table and we spend two days together. She searches the World Wide Web, while I set beside the computer, keeping her café mocha hot.

Saturday and Sunday are my favorite days of the week because I am with Rachel all day long. I wish everyday were Saturday or Sunday, because she would never leave me in that dark, cold cupboard with only glasses and mugs to keep me company.

That was our routine until last night. She returned to the house late in the afternoon with a cast on her right arm. Instead of warming the leftover coffee in the microwave, she poured it into a glass pitcher and put it in the refrigerator. Then she made a fresh pot of coffee and put hot coco powder in the first cup. After that, she took a pint of chocolate ice cream from the freezer, sat down at the table and began eating ice cream directly from the container.

I know that something has changed, not between us, but in her life. This morning Rachel sang a new song, one I have never heard before. “I will never love you ‘cause the cost of love’s too dear, but though I’ll never love you. I will stay with you one year. And we’ll sing in the sunshine...”

Word count: 770