First Cup of Great Coffee

                  

I had my first great cup of coffee in a fifty’s style diner on a tall bar stool with a round red leather seat in the Breaker’s Hotel in Palm Beach, Florida, in 1978 at noon.  I poured in rich, real cream until it was café au lait.  It was the best thing I ever tasted.  I did not need lunch.  I did not need a four o’clock snack.  I barely needed dinner.  I played with my food, pushed it around on the plate taking a couple of bites.  I never felt thinner or more in control. 

I tried it again the next day.  It worked again.  I took a walk on the beach.  My long hair flip flew around in the breeze, and I didn’t mind.   I was at the annual ACPE meeting where I was blown away by presentations made by Roger Schenke, Irv Rubin, and Lee Kaiser.  Their speaking style and content gave me courage for the free feminist moves I had already begun to take.  I saw Bob Jampliss, the current president, with his big smile, rosey complexion, and white hair coming around the corner as I went back in the building.  He greeted me with exuberant recognition.

I continued that caffeine kick at lunch time until it tore up my esophagus about ten years later.  Then I had to give up caffeine, chocolate, and all carbonated drinks to try to put off the two surgeries  that I would eventually have that didn’t quite fix things.  But a cocktail of drugs with the lead ingredient Pepcid made me be able to live and work happily even though I cannot lift more than 15 pounds. 

What former passion have you had to give up to support a better life today?