Feb 6, 2026 — Morning
Waking up, instead of writing down my dream — the one in which ballistic missiles were flying toward me — I will tell you about my coffee.
Why do I want to tell you about my coffee?
Because this morning I woke up, went to make it, and realized that I no longer have the real Ethiopian coffee my helper Ruta gave me.
There was only instant coffee in a small packet. From hospital. So I made the instant one.
But I keep wondering why in the morning I crave coffee so much, even though it’s not good to drink it on an empty stomach. I’m not a coffee addict — my friends laugh when they see the kind of coffee I drink because it’s so weak. I pour about four tablespoons of brewed coffee into a regular 250-milliliter mug, not a tiny espresso cup. Then I add hot water. On top of that, I add about four tablespoons of camel milk. Then I sprinkle it with real cinnamon. And after that, I put in a tiny bit — just on the tip of a spoon — of coconut butter, not oil.
And that is MY coffee.
You may know there are different kinds of cinnamon. Mine is real — ground from true cinnamon sticks that break easily. It’s from Sri Lanka.
I reheat MY coffee in the microwave so it becomes very hot — so hot it almost burns to hold the handle of the mug. I drink it slowly, in small sips, of course, because it’s hot.
And today, I don’t have that kind of coffee.
But there is what there is.
For me, it matters to drink coffee from a cup that means something to me.
I couldn’t drink it peacefully. From the kitchen my child called out, “Mom, the freezer won’t close.”
And I thought: in Ukraine right now, there is a freezer that never closes.