Coffee with Great-Grandma

Every Monday morning I pick my grandmother up and she accompanies me to work. For those who do not know it, I am a local missionary/minister and I conduct Christian worship services for people who live in nursing care facilities with The Sharing Org.  So anyway, I pick my grandma up on Mondays and she accompanies me to my first 2 morning services.  While I have never told her, I secretly wait for her feedback between the first and second services about how she liked (or disliked) the message. While grandma is not what I would consider a theological-giant or anything, for-better-or-for-worse she is my barometer for how effectively I communicated the Gospel.  Like a little boy I seem to need my G-ma's approval.


This morning my wife and eldest daughter went out of town which left me with my youngest 2 (ages 2.5 and 5.5).  So I decided that after me and the kids ran our errands we would head to their great-grandma's and make her some coffee in my new Syphon brewer.  The kids played with the dog (until the dog molested the 5.5 year old) while we made coffee and I told her all the interesting facts about the Indian Monsooned that I was preparing.


After about 15 minutes the coffee was done and G-ma took her first sip.  She immediately told me how good it was but not in a proud-grandma-let's-not-hurt-Johnny's-feelings sort of way but in a my-golly-my-eyebrows-almost-left-my-forehead-because-they-jacked-so-high-in-delight sort of way.  


You could tell that this cup of single-origin bean tasted incredible to her but what I think really made the difference was that for the first time in her life she was invited to not just drink the coffee but rather to experience it.  When she sipped it she was tasting the weather in India, the monsoon rains that drenched the beans and the monsoon winds that blew the green out of them and left them a bleached-light-tan color.  She tasted the mountain mist of the Malabar territory on the Western shore of India and the nutty taste produced by the earth in which the beans grew.  She recognized that the particular cup of coffee she was drinking was a one-of-a-kind crop never to be repeated again.  As a crop, the Monsooned Malabar grew in a soil in a particular area of the globe, with a particular amount of sun, rain, and temperature.  Then as it was cured for a year it experienced a monsoon season that would not be repeated in the same way again.  The cup that she was drinking had a definite history with a story uniquely its own and all of it was communicated to her in the taste.


As me and the kids left for home she expressed to me how much she enjoyed learning about the coffee that I made her and she looked forward to doing it again some time.  As I left I got that weird feeling inside because I had just gotten my G-Ma's approval.