Backbone > Frankly Speaking
Tearing Down a Wall of Long Standing

illustration by Leslie Bender

As I am fated to do every year, this month I celebrate another birthday. Some people don’t like birthdays because it makes them think about dying. Every year I think back to the time when I learned to appreciate what birthdays are really about. It all started with a cup of coffee, my last.
Because it was my birthday, because I was pushing middle-age and had to get something accomplished, because I had had dreams of being somebody, and because I had also had dreams that left me panicked and soaked with dread, and because I had a big ache in the small of my back, I felt—I knew—that this would be no ordinary day.
I didn’t want it to be ordinary either. Parties, presents, kisses, cards, cakes—none of those would make it extra-ordinary. In fact, they would only underline the relentless routine of our dreary, trivial days. I wanted something different. I wanted something significant to happen. I yearned for more than the dawn.

So, I woke up early. The rest of the house was still snoring. I tiptoed around. I trudged through all the morning motions like I was somewhere at the bottom of the ocean. Everything was so far away. I made coffee.

Though it was a bright day outside, inside me there was nothing but dimness. It was a day like any other day, a day that a lot of people have told me they have, too. A string of which we call a year, and tie in a bow. A rope of which we call a life, and lower the box. But today something should be different! Or else what are birthdays for?

The boiling water whispered something on the verge of a whistle, but I pulled up the kettle before the full wake-up call sounded. The perfectly petite mesh basket was filled to its two-thirds mark, and I poured the water over the grounds, careful not to splash. I leaned against the table, watching the watch watch me, timing the brew so that the essence of coffee saturated the solution, but didn’t get bitter. I poured the coffee and let it cool for a moment, the moment it took me to get from the kitchen counter to my study. I put the cup down on the only place clear enough to hold it—the chair.

The state of my desk was a perfect reflection of the disorder, confusion, carelessness, and pointlessness of all the days of my life, though I hoped—oh how I did hope—that this would change. I thought I might change it by straightening up, so I started to rearrange piles and sort sheaves of every manner of paper—articles, plays, the stray sonnet, letters to the landlord. The sun was well up now. The family stumbled about the halls. The desk eventually emerged enough so that I could actually see the surface. So I picked up my lukewarm cup and plopped down, the dread of deadlines now beginning to get ready to go to work on me.

Before I knew it I was down near the bottom. Perhaps there was a gulp or two left. I could feel what felt like coffee in the pit of my gut, and I had that thin tingle of a caffeinated awakeness making its way through my pinched nerves. I even had the slippery after-taste of cream coating the back of my tongue. But my heart sagged. I had done it again. I’d gone through all that trouble—boiling water, filling the basket, timing it, cooling it, preparing it, even drinking it, and I hadn’t tasted it. I had done everything but I had forgotten to taste it. So the whole thing was wasted. What I mean is the point of drinking anything is to really drink it, not just to absent-mouthedly slosh it down the gullet. Especially—for me—coffee, that ceremonious sacrament of my writerly mornings. This was even more perfectly depressing than the chaos of my desk.
And then it happened.

I thought to myself—suppose this is your last cup of coffee. There will be no others. This is it. No second cup, no refill. What then? What now?
This question made it different. Men at death’s door see the preciousness of life and open their eyes to meet it. They see death, so they see life, so each moment for them matters and is full of meaning. They see the alternative. The pity of it, of course, is that it usually comes so late in the day. I was lucky, as they say. I had gotten up early. And that morning I had been given a real birthday gift…a wake-up present.
I sat back in the chair, poised in the moment that had become so precious. The cup was warm enough. I felt the weight of another swallow. I lifted it to my mouth. The flower of the bean swirled into my nostrils. The sunlight caught the corner of the desk like a candle. I thanked the coffee. I drank the coffee.

And since that birthday, every cup of coffee I drink is always my last. May you get this birthday present, too.

—with help from David Perry