Kaffeeklatsch

Dear Avid Reader,

I invite you to pause whatever you are doing, pour yourself a coffee, tea or water (do you prefer naturale or frizzante?) and pull up a comfortable seat to Kaffeeklatsch. For over a year, I’ve tiptoed around my nameless blog in The Birch Chronicle while not posting as consistently as I did when I wrote through the years of caring for my mother during her Alzheimer’s. I wanted to zhuzh up the blog space here with the accessory of a name. Without one, it has seemed like an unformed, indescribable glob of darkness that lacks emotion, room to dance, light to produce growth, charisma! It’s as if I have had a croaked frog lodged on my keyboard extending from the exclamation point to the shift key, one of his toe pads having gotten wedged under the question mark key prompting his last melancholic trill, Why me, blaaagggg?

If I’ve learned anything about myself over the last fourteen years since I started my first online journal, it is that during the ebb and flow of my writing practice, playing around with titles for writing spaces and essays excites me. One of the times I revamped my creative space, my idea was flattened like the croaked frog. I wanted to name it “Notes from a Coffee Shop,” not because I was writing in coffee shops, but with coffee comes the perk of witnessing the human condition which I take interest in. I made the mistake of sharing the name idea with my children. The feedback, for which I didn’t ask, was that it was too cliché. Maybe they were right. Or maybe there was too much of an age gap between me and my younger critics who weren’t yet coffee drinkers.

Note to you and me: always listen to our intuition over the naysayers. If we don’t, and our intuitive idea or decision is meant to live, it will bug us until we chance it. Since my detour from “Notes from a Coffee Shop,” one daily ritual and writing intention never weakened. Either alone or together, there’s always coffee and conversation.

Kaffeeklatsch was inspired by the afternoon telephone chats I have with my friend Matilda, a lover of matcha lattes and who lives a good distance from me. Almost daily, we pick up our cell phones for a chat. Since both of us gave up our land lines (mistake!) and since we don’t know each other’s telephone numbers by heart (does anyone?), we press the other’s name on the screen and carpe diem. Usually, we talk around 2PM from our homes, give or take for the sake of schedules but sometimes from our cars if we’re on an adventure and in good times and in bad but mostly just because.

When Matilda and I were growing up in two different states in the smashing 70’s and decadent 80’s, her mother gathered with friends for Kaffeeklatsch. My mother and godmother, one of her oldest friends, shared afternoon tea together. Matilda’s mother and friends drank coffee eating sweet breads and coffee cake such as an Entenmann’s Raspberry Danish, a Kaffeeklatsch pleaser. My mother and godmother ate Canadian butter shortbread and cuccidati, my mother’s homemade Italian fig cookies, while sipping hot Twinings Earl Grey or Darjeeling tea. Matilda’s mother and friends served sweets on a Bavarian decorated plate painted with red and black sayings such as: “Hotten” my cup. I’ll take it black. One lump or two. Let’s kaffee klatch. For their tea-time, my mother and godmother used a designated set of mismatched vintage teacups and saucers, some with a subtle chip too spare to retire the piece. The afternoon ritual to indulge in earthy coffees and floral and brisk teas with buttery crumbs of conversation was as routine as rolling out of bed in the morning. During these decades when rotary dial telephones with a twisted long cord hung from walls, popping over to visit a friend did not require an invitation, and socializing was done in person rather than through computerized screens, Kaffeeklatsch or what is known in several cultures throughout the world as Merenda, was the norm. My mother said an afternoon cup of tea was just as necessary to recharge her energy and balance out the day as physical exercise.

Whether these gatherings of women lasted twenty minutes or two hours, there was a notion to step away from the clock and take a personal intermission; to indulge in good company and discuss what’s on one’s mind; to not dream of the sweet and slow life served by a jacket and bow-tie wearing server in a Venetian coffee bar or by a determined laid back barista pouring his signature latte art in a Berlin kaffeehaus, though, to experience coffee in either of these places in one’s lifetime is indeed the pastel pink royal icing on a mound of baked butter. Even if our mothers and their friends occasionally traveled to cultures where the mental speed of day is not go, go, go, faster, faster, faster, bigger, better, more, mine, fill, fill, fill the time, they stopped what they were doing for a deserving break.

There is a nurturing aspect, even if sitting at a table for one, about allowing yourself to enjoy afternoon tea made with loose leaves poured in a porcelain cup or holding a hand-painted pottery mug filled with a steaming cafe au lait; something more tantalizing about reserving the slow Kaffeeklatsch or Merenda to wind down time. Kaffeeklatsch (kaffee, German for coffee and klatsch, an informal German word for “gossip”), the afternoon coffee break eating sweets with friends chattering about daily life, originated from the camaraderie of women-mothers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, friends who are sisters-who stayed home to care for the children.

Morning coffee is different from Kaffeeklatsch. For the commuter; for the morning errand-running; for you and your mother for whom you are caregiving; for when you have run out of coffee to make at home in your drip coffee maker, Moka, Nespresso machine, Espresso machine, Chemex, cezve, cold brew maker, percolator, French Press or Sanka anyone?… ordering a grande flat white on a coffee store app is as golden a moment as a tangerine-glazed sunrise. But for the afternoon, a venti three pump mocha sitting in line on a coffee shop counter with deflating whip, waits with a mood like that of a grade-school child whose parent is late for pick up. Have you ever thought your afternoon hot, or cold, beverage of choice begs to ditch the paper and sleeve and see the inside well of your monogrammed mug and go topless?

Does coffee have a mood?

When in a mood of any sort, do you ever confide in coffee or tea? Call a friend? Your mother? A friend now that your mother is gone?

Kaffeeklatsch is catchy. Fun were the nights in the early 90’s watching “Coffee Talk” segments on Saturday Night Live.

Kaffeeklatsch is connection. I don’t know about your local Starbucks but the one down the street from my home was renovated to the order-and-go atmosphere with few tables and chairs to gather for anything at any time such as after the Saturday morning group bike ride, meeting your neighbor who, because of the speed of the culture we live in, you haven’t seen for three months, or for any type of meeting, business, philanthropic, to better the community.

Kaffeeklatsch is cozy. It is good for the whole of us to stop and briefly rest ourselves during the day to refuel. Whether at the office or home, on the train or in the park, working or retired, child-raising or in the second half of life, whoever we are, whatever we do, Kaffeeklatsch has double the benefits like a double shot of espresso with as much sugar as you want. This tradition is a practice of well-being for ourselves which benefits everyone around us.

Decades change. The world modernizes. Rituals of the past are either lost, sustained, or reclaimed with a twist to survive the present. So much happens over coffee. In other words, whether one is at home or in the office, talking in person or over the phone, alone or together, let’s take a moment away from the demands of the day and Kaffeeklatsch.

Coffee is language. Coffee is love. Coffee is life.

Until our next Kaffeeklatsch, every day is a beginning. Rush slowly and be surprised.

Marie