Giving up Coffee

Late summer stock-taking continues. Today's casualty: coffee. I'm giving up coffee. Coffee can be wonderfully delicious, aromatic, and social, but it's not good for me. I had given it up several years back in order to do a full body cleansing, on the way to homeopathic remedy. I can safely say that six weeks after giving up coffee (and lots of other things to boot, but that's a separate story), I felt 85% better. I stayed off it untill early this summer, when the stresses of life propelled me toward our kitchen coffee pot. Yes, some might be saying, my life perhaps is a bit squeaky clean if the drug I reached for was coffee.

First I poured just a touch of coffee into a tall glass of warm soymilk. It was soymilk with a taste of coffee. Week after week passed, I added more and more coffee, until before I knew it, I could no longer deny that I was, in fact, a coffee drinker. Alas. I entered re-denial. I didn't drink coffee at home. I mixed decaf and regular.

I've come to terms with this horrid, terrible addiction. The one that drains my memory, kidnaps my vocabulary, and makes it impossible to reach the end of my sentences. (I'm not making this up; this really is the effect of coffee on my body.)

Me and coffee: it's over. I realized this the other day. I was out with the baby and we drove by an upscale little cafe. "I need a latte," I thought, and pulledthe car over. Inside, I ordered that latte, and you know what, it cost five dollars. And it wasn't even the tallest size. And it wasn't even that great. Something in me snapped, and I knew, then and there, this was the last one.

This mom has had enough.

Today, I did decaf, half a cup, with lots of warm milk. I'm done. I'm gathering friends and family around me for support. I'm resolute. And here, sitting on the porch while the baby naps, under another clear blue sky and a warm breeze, I know that a future life of herbal teas will be good enough for me. I'm ready.