Whipped Coffee and a Morning Ritual

In the spring, everyone on the internet was making a whipped coffee drink: instant coffee, sugar and hot water whipped into a fluffy foam and spooned over cold milk. I made it out of boredom. I kept making it because of my husband.

He's not a morning person. He grumbles until ten. But every morning, I'd whip the coffee by hand with a whisk, four hundred strokes, my arm burning, while he sat at the kitchen table watching me. And every morning, he'd take the first sip, close his eyes and say, "You're a genius."

It became our ritual. We'd sit on the back steps with our tall glasses, watching the birds at the feeder and talking about nothing. Not our phones, not the news. Just us.

We've been married twenty-six years. I don't think we've ever talked so much. I bought an electric whisk in June. He said it doesn't taste as good. He's right.