Amore di Espresso

A funny thing happens when I drink a cup of coffee, be it black or latte incarnation, hot or iced. Within fifteen minutes of the first few hefty sips, I am imbued with a sense of well-being that causes me to love the entire world. Yes, you read right, the ENTIRE world. ALL of it. There ain't no mountain high enough that I can't scale it with ardor; no valley low enough, including the deepest unknown crevasses under the oceans, that I won't rappel with affection. There's no person ugly enough that I would be unable to dig out at least a mote of humanity left at even the rottenest of cores.


As for those individuals already held in high-esteem, my estimation of their fine qualities soars beyond the capabilities of 20/20 vision enhanced by telescope. I want to ring everyone in my contact list and pepper them with wireless hugs and kisses. Or, board a jet and and show up on their front porch with biscotti and garden flowers. Or, run a full find-a-cure-for-what-ails-them marathon, make their house and car payments over the summer, offer free 'anytime' babysitting for a year, scrub every square inch of their bathroom with a toothbrush until it sparkles . . . even pluck their wiry misplaced ear and nose hairs! It's probably best that I'm usually in the cab of the Yukon or Chevy Truck driving down a local road to somewhere when this era of good feeling hits me, or I'd have my time promised out to generations beyond my eventual demise.

This caffeinated cause and effect amuses my husband. He alternates between laughing and encouraging it to last until he can get home and advising me that the very fact of the phenomenon points at my innate and perpetual weirdness. It's kind of a running joke between us now. I'll text him before taking off from Starbuck's or JoZoara's and inform him that I'm on the brink of loving the world. Again. Or, if I deign to pour myself the dregs he leaves in the coffee pot each morning, I'll call him as I'm whizzing about the house, performing chores at engaging high speeds -- and oh, so happy to do so -- or when my feet are rhythmically pounding the pavement in earnest, extra sweat exuding from my pores, one of the more undesirable side effects of my infant java habit.

To be sure, this isn't the way that most regular imbibers of the brewed bean react. My brother and neighbor point out that it sounds like a high of sorts. Probably is. I don't have a basis for comparison. I've never inhaled or snorted, much less popped a few pills. And, while drunkenness had its early onset of sensory benefits, it was still very much a heady enhancement of which I was aware. Any initial sense of sharpness quickly gave way to the three stooges of alcohol -- mumbling, stumbling, and bumbling. It couldn't be evenly sustained; wasn't beneficial to my mind or body; and there was always an aggravating hangover for company later. My coffee super power feels more like an extension of my core: that part of me forever wishing all could exist as pure agape love, one for the other. Oh, and did I mention that caught in the height of the fever, I am gripped with a surety that if I just sat down and focused, I could pound out my first novel before the setting of the sun?

Maybe it was my late in life introduction. Perhaps it's an extension of my body's atypical response to a good many medications. It could be, as my spouse points out, merely another example of the differences between me and the general population. Who knows? As long as there is no harm to me or others, and no odd mind- or body-altering recovery to follow, I rather enjoy the intensity of positive emotion. For a few hours, everything comes up aces and roses and cherry pies. It's not that beauty, love, and goodness are absent from my everyday experience, but they are often tightly wedged between venti portions of reality and regularity. Ordering up a grande double shot of irregular benevolence is just fine by me.

Next time you hear I'm halfway through my soy latte, you might want to call me for that BIG favor.