Monday, June 14, 2010

Coffee cups

The other day Sheri dropped my favorite coffee cup. The cup was empty, because I had finished my coffee. Still, I gasped. History was crashing to the floor. The cup had belonged to my grandparents, a prize they received for donating money to the Polish National Home in Hartford, Connecticut on the occasion of its 60th anniversary in 1990. It was a deep cup, solid and steady, with a smooth lip. It had a few scratches, but I’m a sentimental sort who likes drinking out of a cup from which his grandfather sipped.

Sheri dropped the cup and it made an awful sound against the floor tiles, but it didn’t break.

The next morning when I filled it, a puddle appeared around its base, seeping from a hairline crack. “Sheri,” I said, “I need a new favorite cup.”

So Sheri came home with one. It’s white with colorful polka dots.

“It’s happy,” she said.

“I like an old cup,” I said, pulling one from the cabinet. I picked one we’d bought at Powell’s Book Store in Oregon, a cup that’s coffee stained and scratched, a chip in the handle. “I like a cup that’s been around, that has character. I like a cup that tells stories.”

Sheri said, “I like a fresh cup. A clean one. One that’s new.”

Then we ate breakfast, neither of us realizing that we had also been talking about the reasons we married.

2 comments:

  1. Love reading all your posts. It is great to find a couple with such an age difference having a successful marriage. Me and my husband have a 17 year difference as well, 18 years most months. We have been married 3 years. He was 20 when we met in parking lot 4 years ago. It has only gotten better and it started out amazing. :)

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  2. Thanks, Mango, and congratulations to you and yours on your marriage! Here's to its ongoing success. So, you met in a parking lot? There's a story there. Flat tire? Bumpers colliding? Shopping cart racing?

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