I grind the coffee beans and brew two cups of coffee. Judy’s goes in an insulated cup with a lid. Mine is an open glass cup. As I top off the coffee in my cup, that’s when I think about Uncle Doug. Not really my uncle, an older cousin. And not a lot older, just the age of my second oldest brother. But in my middle teenage years, in a random conversation, he called me Uncle Steve, and I called him Uncle Doug, and it stuck.
I think of him as I carry my full cup of coffee into the living room and set it down on the coffee table. Doug would occasionally visit us when we lived in Colorado. The kids were little and Uncle Doug was always a great hit because he paid attention to them. And they could legitimately call him Uncle Doug. We’d shuffle kids in bedrooms so there would be one open for him. He’d stay a week or two, then be on his way back to Southern California. He usually visited in the fall, close to the holidays, and several times got delayed coming or going by freak snowstorms. One year, I spent an entire night at Stapleton Airport to pick him up during a blizzard, while his airplane circled, got rerouted, landed to refuel in another state, and finally made it back to Denver to land. The only real information I got about his progress as that night progressed was from the pay phone with Judy on the other end of the line, and the best information she could get was already hours old by the time she got it.
Meanwhile, us all enjoying his visit, he taught us the dice game of Farkle. Good fun to play a dice game that makes the kids giggle every time they say it. And he taught us the card game Bullshit. There was a more family friendly name, I Doubt It, but what a special treat for the kids to get to throw down their cards and yell Bullshit and not get in trouble. What triggers all this for me is the full cup of coffee. Doug would pitch in around the house and kitchen, naturally absorbing chores like he lived there. In the morning the pot of coffee would be brewing in the Mr. Coffee maker, and I was amazed how he could get the water so perfect in the tank that the pot of brewed coffee would be so full right to the brim. When he poured his cup, it would be the same way. Coffee right to the brim. Getting the most of it I guess. I don’t know how he didn’t leave a trail of spilled coffee through the house into the living room. I carry my less-than-that filled cup of coffee to the living room now to accomplish the same goal and still puzzle about how he did it.