The Smell of Coffee

As I sit here at Camp As Sayliyah, in the very hot country of Qatar, I think of one very simple thing that has been constant throughout my life, no matter where my travels have taken me.

The smell of coffee. It has an amazing calming effect on me and I have to sit and ponder why. I think that it represents a little bit of normalcy in a life that most wouldn't consider normal. I am in a foriegn land away from my family, and yet, the smell of coffee first thing in the morning is exactly the same. I yearn for my home, my kitchen table at 6:15am, which (in my other life) is when I would sit in the kitchen and drink my coffee and check my emails. I get up a little earlier than I have to, just so that I can enjoy my ritual in peace. Well, it doesn't exactly work that way all the time. When you have two toddlers in your home, chances are that someone is going to interrupt my morning with a request like "Mama hold me", "Pauly coffee?(I convince my 2 year old that hot chocolate is his coffee so he doesn't try to take mine)", or sometimes the request is simply "Spongebob Squarepants". Though I love to hold my little boys and love that they want to share the morning with me...sometimes I really hope for the "Spongebob Squarepants" request. Then I can go back to my coffee and my peace...even if only for a moment.

I can't ever remember not smelling coffee in the morning. When I lived with my mama and stepfather, there was always coffee in the coffee pot. When I joined the Marine Corps the smell was always there. Visiting my dad and stepmom in Panama City Beach, Fl, I get the same feeling of calm when I smell this magical drink. In the last 11 years, I have lived in more places than I care to remember and I have come to realize that the simple things, such as the smell of coffe, can make a house feel like a home. Even when I am in Iraq, a country devastated and completely torn apart by war, the smell of coffee reminds me of home. I can smile and relax, thinking of happy times and comfort. I think not only the past, but of the future as well. Soon, I will be drinking my coffee at home again, at 6:15 in the morning, enjoying my family and my everyday life yet again.