151 Comments

Fantastic. Every detail and image and emotion

Expand full comment
Apr 24·edited Apr 24

That is really beautiful. What a powerfully surprising and perfectly apropo ending.

Expand full comment

That the uncle guards the quiet ritual around his coffee. Then steps onto the loudest of transporters. So cool.

Expand full comment

That was absolutely BEAUTIFUL!

Expand full comment

I write about all these and had featured a coffee theme complete with song and verses, which I will continue to include. Just getting around to catching up with all our talent here😊 Just click the archives section

Expand full comment

Coffe cup theme got me, dogs held me and Mic Jagger clinched the deal....I'm in😊

Expand full comment

I am at a stage in my life (72) where I am beginning to wonder what items will be meanginful to my children when I die. I hope they divvy up the quilts I've made, but am more interested in what unexpected small item - like a coffee cup - might resonate with them. From my father I treasure t1 1923 quarter that I found in his safety deposit box at the bank. It's a great story prompt!

Expand full comment

Moving. I have my grandmother's gold band wedding ring inscribed inside "S.A.G. 5o L.V.C. 1-17-17". She was born in 1897 and when she was six, moved from northern Missouri to southern Iowa in a covered wagon. .She was my best friend. She died when she was 103. I wish I had a safe tree I could climb to thread her ring over a topmost branch.

Expand full comment

Simply beautiful. Visceral...so much to love:

"That red coffee cup was a quiet thing. That's why I loved it. My uncle always woke at dawn and would sit on his front porch sipping his too-sugary Folger's Instant from that cup. Anybody could join him but nobody was supposed to talk."

Expand full comment

This is so beautiful.

Expand full comment

I loved reading this. I inherited my mother’s cup, which held her coffee in the morning and then after dinner, it became a tea cup. I love the idea of your putting your uncle’s cup in the top of a tall tree. I don’t know if you believe in heaven and if yours is up or in what direction it can be thought of, (not sure if I believe in it either), but perhaps one day that tree will become tall enough that if your uncle is in heaven and it is up there, he can reach down and grab it for his morning coffee. They used to say that Maxwell House was that “heavenly coffee”. I wonder if that’s what they drink there.

Expand full comment

I think I loved the idea of the cup growing closer to the sun as much as I loved the story. I could feel your fear as you got higher and higher in the tree. Now for millennia, or at least the lifetime of a tree not a man, that cup is there as a memorial to your beloved uncle. I make tiny altars in crevices of The Big Stump, a centuries old landmark on the beach near my home on the Lummi Reservation. Some of my parent ashes are buried deep in the highest point of the stump. My altars are made of agates, circle rocks, tiny crabs, broken shells and pieces of colored glass washed up on the beach. They disappear in winter storms and I start again. But my parents ashes will always be there......like your cup and the sun.....

Expand full comment

Beautiful essay!

Expand full comment

Indians love to talk...yes!

Expand full comment