Life and Black Coffee

After the meeting, Sue told me raising a child in a world in such turmoil terrified her.

I told her my mother was the youngest of six. She was born during the Great Depression. She watched her brothers leave one by one to fight WWII, not knowing if they were coming back. My father joined the Navy near the end of the war. They worried he might get called back to service during the Korean War.

My parents struggled financially most of their marriage. My father worked for a couple of companies that went out of business. She fought two bouts with lymphoma, nearly died while her kids were still young.  They raised us through the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War, Vietnam and civil unrest, Watergate, and the Energy Crisis.

 I said, “But, my lasting memory of my mother is her sitting in a recliner in my living room, cup in hand, reading the paper, and smiling. Do you know what she taught me?”

“The world’s a horrible place?” Sue asked. “Disaster waits around every corner?”

“No. You’ll get through this. And, drink your coffee black. Like life, even if it’s a little bitter, it’s still sweet.”

Today I’ll accept the bitter with the sweet.

Dogged Determination ©2018 by Ken Montrose

Dogged Determination is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters and anyone you might know is purely coincidental.

Other works by Ken Montrose are available at www.greenbriartraining.com https://www.pinterest.com/kenmontrose/mt-rose/