A little after 6 each morning, I greet Monsieur Café effusively, pour him a carafe full of fresh water, and add a couple of heaping soupspoonfuls of fresh coffee. I call in Kiki from her morning yard patrol and, while I check my email, inhale deeply the wonderful aroma that suffuses the house. All will be well with the world that day.

My earliest memories of coffee, from before the war, have as much to do with sound as aroma. My parents lightened and sweetened their java with Red Cross condensed milk, which poured slow as molasses from the larger of two holes my father punched in the small, rimless can. It was the stirring that I remember. Both parents were deaf and couldn’t hear the tink-tink sound of the spoon on the cup — especially my father, who’d aspired briefly to be a pharmacist like his father, and believed in a thorough mixing of…



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