The other day, our coffeemaker died after a long day of gurgling, steaming, sputtering effort which failed to produce even one drip of coffee. We knew it was coming – first the on switch stopped working and we had to set the auto timer and trick it into turning on every time, then there were several unprovoked incidents of grounds overflowing into the pot, and finally there was the death rattle that produced first a half pot, then a quarter pot, then no pot of coffee at all. Our coffeemaker gave us years of faithful service, and we worked it hard, sometimes making several pots a day. All that time I never realized how much we depend on that machine – until the day it died, and our lives seemingly came to a halt. We dragged our French press pot down from the cupboard and tried to remember the correct grounds to water ratio, but failed most of the time, either making it too weak or too strong – usually erring on the too-strong side, we sometimes were unable to push the plunger down all the way. The French press made a smaller quantity of coffee – not enough even to get us through the first hour of the day; plus, we couldn’t set it up at night to brew us a pot before the alarm went off in the morning. The corner of the counter where the coffee machine used to sit looked so desolate, I could hardly bear to look at it.
