What's In My Coffee

There was piece of straw in my coffee up last week. I really didn't notice it, floating gently like a thin yellow raft on the small brown pond of coffee. Then, as I raised the cup to sip,it bumped gently against my lips. Surprised, I lowered the cup to see peer inside and there it was, innocent and quivering on the surface.

Drinking coffee in the morning is a secondary career; first on the list in my consciousness is putting on make-up, reading of morning headlines, getting my briefcase ready. The cup is just barely within my peripheral vision; my hand instinctively finds it and raises it to just the right position for a sip. This happens over and over every morning, a routine that sets the rhythm of the morning.

Until last week, when the piece of straw appears. I stop abruptly, lower the cup and peer inside. There it is, a remnant of my earlier trip to the barn. It perhaps lodged in my hair,traveled the short trip back to the house, and then let go to float into the cup, waiting for the next assignment.

I grin at the sight of the piece of straw, dip into the cup to pick it out, walk to the trash can to flip it off my finger, lick my finger and take another sip. This is not what my sister would have done; the coffee would be down the drain, the cup rinsed - or perhaps deposited in the dishwasher and replaced with a clean cup out of the cabinet - but my sister is not a horse person.

To a horse person,a mere piece of straw in your drink is really low on your list of concerns. Your hands spend many hours on a manure fork, lifting the residue of a horse off the floor of the stall and into a muck bucket. When you brush a mud-encrusted horse in the early spring, the dirt flies in clouds around you, coming to rest in your hair and clothing. When you lift a hoof to clean it out after the horse has been playing in a spring rain, you get mud smeared on your hands, which then are conveniently wiped on your jeans. Your washing machine has small brown hairs in every crevice from the saddlepads that are washed there. The back seat of your truck is covered in muddy pawprints from the dogs who jump in for a ride after having run around the pasture. At horse shows or trail rides, you'd really like to wash your hands before eating that sandwich, but who's got time and where is the water anyway?

These are in fact, points of pride particularly for women who own horses. We brag about how dirty our houses are but how clean our barns are. We are NOT the target market for Chlorox or any of the anti-bacterial proselytizers seen on TV. Our kids eat plenty of healthy germs and are rarely sick. Our teenage daughters are not at the mall in make-up and designer clothes, they are on the back of a horse (often bareback) getting dirty and sweaty. A sisterhood: We are dirty and proud of it.

The piece of straw in my cup.. well, why waste a good cup of caffeine, which will keep me going all day through my full time job and then afterwards to do barn work? Just dip out the invader, take a sip, and ..