The Way We Take Our Coffee

A lot can be said about how someone takes their coffee.

Everyone has their own version, the drink that makes it theirs.

On the rare day I treat myself to a coffee shop latte, I find myself lingering while I wait. I watch the pickup counter—the condensation beading on plastic cups, the slanted Sharpie names beginning to blur. I wonder about the people behind those names.

Is this part of their morning ritual, or a break in a bad day? Did they wake up early enough to savor it, or are they already running behind?

I have my usual order, too. But I’ve noticed that different coffees turn me into different versions of myself.

When I make my daily iced latte with my Nespresso—topped with cold foam and adorned with a curved glass straw, I am myself. Steady Familiar. Safe.

When I’m at my mom’s house, brewing a pot and letting the smell of coffee fill the air, listening to the low hum and sputter of the machine, I become someone else entirely. A diner waitress in another life, ready to pour refills and ask how you take your eggs.

When I carry a hot coffee in a to-go cup, I walk a little faster. I hold my head higher. I feel sharper. More certain. Like someone with somewhere important to be—a woman who knows exactly what she’s doing.

And when I sip on a frappe, I soften. I am younger. Blushing over texts, measuring time in holidays and small excitements, the world still a little sweeter than it is now.

Some say the eyes are the windows to the soul.

But I think it’s coffee.

Cream or sugar. Oat milk or none. Strong and black or subdued to taste. The smallest choices, repeated daily, begin to say something about us.

A cup of coffee can shift the shape of a morning. Getting it wrong can throw everything off. Getting it right feels like something small falling into place.

That first sip—the warmth, the quiet jolt of caffeine—feels like a beginning. Before it, I move through the morning a little slower, not quite myself, going through the motions. After it, something settles. Something clicks into place.

This isn’t really about coffee.

It’s about the quiet ways we build ourselves.

The routines we return to. The versions of ourselves we slip into without thinking. The small choices that, over time, become who we are.