Monday, April 30, 2007

Ghost

Every morning, as I get off the bus to climb on the underground to go to work, a scent assails my senses that brings me a little bit of my father.

Most people close to my father would tell you he was a coffee aficionado. It was spoken of, almost exhaustingly at his funeral. This coffee house to go to if you wish to talk, this one if you really just want good coffee, this one if you are taking really good friends, this one if you wish to impress people.

What no one realized was as much as my father loved coffee, and he did, I learned coffee from him, he loved chocolate chip cookies more. The afternoon 3pm espresso (exspresso, as he pronounced it) was merely an enhancement of the the two chocolate chip cookies he would eat.

It was the first thing I leared to cook (the second was pizza for similar reasons) was chocolate chip cookies. That was why he drank the coffee.

So, when I step off the bus and smell that unique combination of butter, vanilla, and baking chocolate coming from the local cookie shop, it is my father wispering in my ear, his ghost before my eyes. And it is something I enjoy every day. A brief visit from my father.