Wake up and smell the coffee

When I first starting painting ceramics around 10 years ago,  one of the first things I made was a set of coffee mugs, which are sitting on a shelf in my kitchen. 

This set has special significance to me because it’s part of  how I discovered a passion for art.    

Because I love words, I use them in my art;  and I painted a word at the bottom of each cup.  As I painted them, I imagined myself drinking my coffee every day—and how I would always remember these mugs as something I associated with healing from cancer.

In our house every single morning, V makes the coffee.  When I get up, I pour it into one of these mugs. 

No—-not THOSE mugs.

  These mugs.

These are the cups everyone has someplace; the ones you get as souvenirs at events or parties or on trips; plus cups I painted that I don’t love like the set on the shelf.   Some of them are even chipped.

Yet these are the mugs I actually use every single day. 

 If there’s anything I learned from cancer, it’s to live every single moment in the present—-because it’s truly all we have.    So you’d think I would know enough to wake up and smell the coffee—and finally pour it into the mugs where it belongs.