Mug Love by Angie Ledbetter

{Photo by Angie Ledbetter}

Bad Ode to Yon Vessels

Oh, coffee mugs, coffee mugs, I love you.
Without you here, what would I do?

*Smile* and good morning to all you coffee or tea drinkers. If you have a collection of favored mugs like I do, you'll understand this post. If not, just come along for the ride anyway.

I love each of my mugs for different reasons, but like my children, I love them all equally. Let me introduce you to my seven favorites: Senorita is the cup with the fish handles my daughter brought home from her senior cruise to Cozumel in appreciation for helping with her trip. Muscle Gal comes from one of my sons' trips to a Boy Scout National Jamboree to NY. He said it reminded him of me -- "Mom, it's a little cracked from the journey, but still got good life in it." (How's that for a teenage boy's attempt at symbolism?!) At least the chip doesn't come near my mouth as I swill my coffee!

Now, Big Gulp (the green upside down mug) I love because I rescued him from the trash heap at the end of a garage sale. What a bargain at just .10! Atop him sits The Black Lion. I treated myself to this beautiful, shiny treasure at the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans while attending the Pen-to-Press Writers Conference. Next is Choo-Choo, the cup I purchased to commemorate a trip taken a decade ago to Colorado when we visited the Silverton-Durango coal-powered train. I love that cup because it's so unique; when hot liquids are poured inside, the blackened windows of the depot open to reveal several train engines. Then they go dark again when the liquid cools.

The big one to the right with all the faces of literary masters? That's B&N, named for the bookstore chain where I found it. I love it for obvious reasons including its depths and ability to limit my trips back to the coffee pot. Last but not least is The Graveyard. The place we all finally wind up. It reminds me to carpe diem, encourages me to keep writing, and represents an actual friend's book -- Deborah Leblanc's Grave Intent.

Before you call me a complete nut, think about this: each of my "mugs" is completely different in size, shape and description, yet provides me with key elements for healthy survival -- gifts from their interiors! These gifts for which I am daily filled with gratitude are good memories, inspiration, comfort, continuity, and the essence of all that is good in my world.

Yeah, you guessed it, the mugs are just like my dearest flesh and blood friends! And as trite as my Ode and the following saying are, they are nonetheless true: My cup runneth over. And to my compadres: I love your mugs, inside and out!

All Warm Inside by Nannette Croce

A few days ago in my area a predicted rain changed to unpredicted snow around late afternoon. The accumulation was only 1-3 inches, but with temperatures holding at freezing, it played havoc with rush hour traffic, or so the radio said. Watching the heavy wet flakes stack up on the driveway and street, my mind drifted back to times spent idling in traffic while the sky grew dark. Jumping out of my car every so often to remove caked snow from my wipers, the only consolation being that mine was not one of the cars that skidded into each other a mile up the road. I remembered the time the Fed Ex guy hooked a chain to his van and pulled me out of a ditch when the road out of the corporate center had become indistinguishable.Then there was the afternoon and evening spent chasing after an over-stimulated two-year-old waiting for her Dad, whose company had shut down at noon, to come home and play in the snow. It was 7:00PM before I saw his car struggling to make those last few feet to the driveway. And oh those many mornings listening to lists of school closing numbers while running the limited childcare options over in my mind.

I went downstairs and poked my head into my husband’s office, knowing he’d be too engrossed in work to check the weather.

“Feel like making a fire? It’s snowing.”

“Hey, yeah. Can you make us some coffee?”

We took our laptops into the family room, sipped coffee in front of a warm fire, and, from time to time, remembered other winter events in the days when we had no choice but to take to the road.

Pain and Me by Kathryn Magendie

In nights of physical pain, I lift from my body, hover above, and watch my weakness with disdain. I dream without sleeping, float in a sea of nerve endings glowing red. I write beautiful words in the dark; they are slender threads of silver and gold, pulsing with meaning and truth. Pain purifies thoughts, sharpens the senses. In the night hours, I pity the part of me that demands attention to the fiery current racing down my spine and legs. I toss, turn, and wish it would stop so I won’t have to take more of the white pill. I argue my case, and pain argues back its own. One night, Pain opened up to me and said, "At times, I’d rather be called something else, like beauty, or hope, or joy. Do you think it's easy being hated and feared? I do my job and that is what I do. Who told you life is lived without pain?" I answered, "Do your worst! I am strong!” And I lay there, and I felt Pain, and thought, who would I be without Pain? It’s become a part of me, attached to me as if an extra body part. It's mine. And I can take it. I am strong.

In the quiet dark, I think how one day I will be a very old woman. I’ll walk crooked to the coffee pot, pour a cup, and holding the cup with trembley hands, I’ll shuffle to the porch, carefully sit in my rocker, pull a throw over my knees, and rock rock and think about pain and me and how we had a long good life together. I’ll wonder, did pain take away or did pain give insight, and empathy? I will drink every bit of my strong black coffee and I'll be grateful for its taste and heat, and I'll say, "Come on pain, today we will write, and then we will rock some more, and then we will read, and then we will rock some more. Life is good." And it won't seem but a minute that I am on Earth, just a minute. Just a minute. A minute. Minute.