The Day the Coffee Pot Died

Today’s offering is an excerpt from my book (now out of  print) Slices.

"This morning the coffee pot died. I laid there after setting it up and there was no gurgle, gurgle. I was not awake enough to make the silence important; so I dozed some more. Then stirring, I went for the eye opener; that warm, bracing jolt I received each day from the caffeine and sugar. Oh yes, I use sugar! There was a small amount of appeared to be mud at the bottom of the pot; it was cold. The coffee pot had died! Its death was not foretold by any noticeable illness. It had worked fine yesterday; matter of fact, yesterday’s coffee was particularly good. It displayed signs of extreme health yesterday, then today it died; leaving me to open my eyes some other way.

On my home from the temporary job, I stopped at the thrift shop seeking a used coffee pot; because the other way of opening my eyes is not my preference. They had several yesterday, the smiling lady behind the counter told me; but today they had none. It would appear there is an epidemic of dying coffee pots in the Miami area. I had not heard a word. But the evidence was there; in that this particular thrift store had sold all the coffee pots they had in one day! What else to do, go buy a brand new coffee pot. To do so, I had to head west from the thrift store to the discount store where the prices would be more reasonable. Heading west at five forty-five in the evening, in South Florida, in February means heading into the sunset. That was how I received the legacy from the dead coffee pot.

The evening sky was one of the most radiant there had been in a while. We have beautiful sunsets in South Florida. We are almost an island here, with an ocean on the east, a sea to the south and a gulf on our western flank; we do not much count much the northern land mass. Today’s sunset was resplendent with the colors available in a sunset when there is water nearby. As I headed west, the sky was still light, the sun sitting on the rim of the horizon. There were large, fanning clouds filtering sunlight up and into more clouds. The vista was spectacular. 

At the edge of a hole in the lower clouds, the light poured up; it was orange and white. Up, in the higher clouds the colors were a deeper orange and so many shades of mauve, they could not be numbered. The clouds drifting away from this particular display of light and mauve were displaying streams of orange, pinkish blues, mauves and a deeper blue, where they thinned allowing the sky to form the background. I melted. Got all soft inside. 

The love which painted the sky for me to see, knew the coffee pot would die and I would be privileged to see the handiwork of God."