A Cup to Hold On To

Every morning, for years, the first thing I did at work was make a cup of coffee.

Not to drink it. I have to admit something strange: I never really liked the taste of coffee. Too bitter, too strong. What I loved was everything else. I put the cup on the desk in front of me, before the first email, before the first phone call, and I just breathed it in. Then I wrapped both hands around it and held it, and the warmth slowly went into my fingers, my wrists, somewhere deeper.

I never thought of myself as a person with habits I couldn't live without. But if I had one small dependence in my life, it was this. Not the caffeine, I think. The moment.

In my hardest months, that cup did more for me than I understood at the time. There were mornings when I came to work feeling like I was barely holding on, as if one more heavy thought would pull me under. And then there was the coffee. The smell, the warmth, the bitterness. It was like a small anchor that kept me tied to the ground. However dark it got, that cup was always there on the desk, keeping me from drifting too far.

I didn't know how much I leaned on it until it was gone.

In January, my body told me to stop. The headaches had become part of every day, and coffee was one of the things that had to go. I listened. I didn't argue. My body had been carrying too much for too long, and this was something small it asked of me.

But the first mornings were hard in a way I didn't expect. I walked into the office and my hands didn't know what to do. The desk in front of me looked empty. There was no smell, no warmth, nothing to hold on to while the day rushed in. I felt strangely unprotected, as if someone had taken away a railing I had been gripping without noticing.

Now there is a cup of warm water in front of me instead.

It is not romantic. It has no smell. Nobody would ever write a song about it. But I drink it slowly, for my body, to help it be a little calmer, a little steadier. And while I hold it, I do the same thing I always did: I stop, I breathe, and I tell myself that I am here.

Maybe the anchor was never really the coffee. Maybe it was the pause.

The few seconds every morning when I stopped, breathed, held something warm and told myself: I am here, this is real, I can begin.

The coffee was something I used to hold on to. The warm water is something I give back. A small daily kindness to the body that kept me going through all of it.

I still miss the smell. When someone opens a fresh pack of coffee in the office kitchen, I close my eyes for a second, like meeting an old friend in the street. But I am learning that you can keep the moment, even when you have to let go of the thing.

What is your small anchor? The little thing that keeps you here on the hardest mornings?

With love, from HerWay

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