The Wastepaper Basket

My packages have been lost in transit.

I’m not known for giving great gifts, which is partially why the missing packages come at such a painful blow. I’m down to the last few hundred dollars in my checking account, and the books I bought for my family was a calculated and worthwhile gesture. I’m 22 now, an adult member of the family. Adults buy each other gifts, and mine were curated and thoughtful. I even bought them on Black Friday, the thing that adults with their heads screwed on straight are supposed to do. 

My poor books have been bouncing around the US, mis-labeled due to a website error, homeless little vagabonds that will probably never see their intended homes. One of the parcels is in Colorado, another in Texas. That helps the sting– if they’re not with me, at least they can be warmer than I am right now.

I am finally home for Christmas. Not only me, but my parents and two of my siblings, Dove, and Mariah. We are an awkward but thankful bunch. Tomorrow eldest brother Isaac and his wife drive down to our farmhouse in the woods so we can have an early Christmas together. Last year I missed out on a Missouri Christmas, sniffling and wallowing in self pity in London. I’m thankful in retrospect for that period, and thankful now to be sitting beside Mariah in her childhood bedroom, both of us typing away on the fox-printed bedsheets. I keep on interrupting her to make her listen to Phil Collins and The Ramones, jamming my headphones on her head without warning. Mariah is the only reason I’m writing today– she keeps me honest. Mariah, and my singular fan, her friend from college that for whatever reason keeps up to date with my proverbial drool puddle of a blog. I have always wanted readers, and I find it absolutely baffling to have one. Baffled and thankful– I’m trying to do better at being thankful.

There are three adults children in the farmhouse. My parents moved us down here in 2014, when I was 11 years old. Isaac was about to move off to college, and my mother had a dream of scraping out a real Little House On The Prairie life here. Us kids liked the idea of being deep in the woods, running around in the dry creeks and trying to kill each other with handmade weapons. If you wander around the property, there are still huts, forts, and strange burrows to be excavated. Little people used to live here. No farm– the only farm was the one that belonged to my great-grandparents, the original owners of the little stone cottage. There are echoes of them in certain places– over a decade later, my mother never got her Laura Ingalls dream. We re-fenced parcels, cleared out patches of field, dug out gardens and even built an ingenious chicken coop. There are two dogs, the usual rotation of barn cats that get eaten or snatched every nine months, and that handful of chickens. We sort of look like a farm– our grandfather lives across the way, and he comes and bales hay in the field. We keep our Christmas decorations in the crumbling milk barn. (Which I am still terrified of a decade after coming across a slithering black snake that I mistook for hose) There’s even a tractor, a little orange investment that is useful for digging up our always leaking pipes, and hooking up the backup generator whenever the power decides to splutter out. Tractors, chickens, hay bales, and thousands of trees. That’s basically a farm.

I’ve always known this existence was a strange one. I’m not sure what tipped me off– we grew up isolated, with a micro-community of other strange people. Driving forty minutes round trip for unpasteurized milk is a point of pride here. Homeschoolers take up at least 15% of the community. Our Christmas parade is half fairy-light clustered tractors. Last year one of our mayoral candidates was the former drug dealer for my father’s high school. The recently former drug dealer. I think he sold band t-shirts as a side gig.

I like coming home. For the first time I really feel like this is a visit. I have no idea where I’m headed after this, but I know there’s some sort of somewhere waiting for me. I can wait for my applications to bring forth a harvest, and sip on my coffee.

One of the best parts of coming back to Missouri: the coffee.

When I was in the UK, I told my host family that something I missed was gas station coffee. It’s one of the closest things we have to a real culture. I love a gas station. I love rotating hot dogs, limited-flavor Dr. Peppers, yellowing checkered tiles, cashiers with neck tattoos and piercings that you didn’t know were legal. I love weird tank-top wearing old women who see bras as optional and cowboy boots as a necessity.

I’m getting sidetracked. Yes, I love gas stations, and I love the coffee– cardboard cup infused, over-brewed, grey-tasting coffee. There’s something nostalgic about a good gas station coffee. Nothing pairs better with a stale muffin than this beverage. I love the drink for the concept, the memory, but never for the flavor. I will praise this drink for a while, but I have to admit it has a caffeinated rival. My dad makes the best coffee in the world.

My father is very focused in his skills. Small talk, emotional literacy, and nutrition are not part of his repertoire. He is a computer man raised by boomer dairy farmers. As singular as my dad is, he is nothing compared to the strangeness of his own parents. I could write a book on my grandfather. 

My dad used to drink Folgers by the pot. He used to work long hours– double shifts were a part of his weekly routine. It’s not cheap to be a single income homeschooling family of six. From about ages 9-17 of my life, I was used to seeing my dad in an unconscious position, wiped from being THE computer guy at a very tech-UNconsious dairy plant. The strange nocturnal man. If he was home in the mornings, I could guarantee that he had been awake hours before any of us. He’s become used to seeing the day as something that begins in darkness.

Back to the coffee– because of the long hours, the rise and grind mentality, we used to be a coffee-pot family. None of us kids were caffeine drinkers, but my parents LIVED off this machine. But life changes, and new chapters begin. When my dad transferred to a hybrid job, my mom sent us off into the world and went back to work, leaving dad home alone. It soon became clear that my father could not be left alone with the Folgers can. 

When I dropped out of school, the pot had been demolished. My dad had begun to measure his doses by pots instead of cups, and my mom was worried he’d never see his grandchildren. I began working for a little country store, and I brought home some knock-off-Kuerig-single-doser. This was a great way to wean him off of his old ways, but this too had to be disposed of after he began to break our coffee-pod budget. The machine was quick and easy, and he used it like a never-ending caffeine tap. 

I left home to begin my travels when the french press was brought out. I hated the french press. It was a pain to keep clean, and a frustratingly slow process for somebody who’s looking for a quick pick me up in the morning. I moved to Wales and lived off of tea and an eclectic kettle. God bless Cymru. 

By the time I returned, my father had become on of the biggest coffee snobs I had ever seen. I laughed at his process– I teased him for the terror in his eyes whenever I touched the precious french press. My mother and I didn’t make it right, he said. There’s a science to it. I will lay out said science here:

1. Begin boiling water. Stick thermometer in kettle for the purpose of removing kettle from heat after it reaches desired temperature. 
2. Grind exactly 56 grams of beans in state of the art coffee grinder. (I don’t know the real price tag, but I know this grinder cost enough that it was his birthday and Christmas present combined)
3. Pour 840 grams of temped water (there is a scale for this sole purpose) over 56 grams of coffee grounds.
4. Stir entire contents gently and let sit for 4 minutes.
5. After 4 minutes, stir the layer that has floated to the top– it should provide a delicate and foamy crema. Let sit for 7 minutes.
6. After 7 minutes, press coffee.

You know the worst part of this process? It makes the best damn coffee you’ve ever had.

Over a year later, I follow this same process. I’m trusted with the coffee making (he’s stuck labels to the kitchen scale to make sure I follow correctly) and I wouldn’t dare to do it any other way. It’s aggravatingly worthwhile.

My parents rise firsts, and my father makes them coffee. He’s already working at his standing desk in the dining room when Mariah and I wake up. I make the second pot, which doesn’t illicit much praise from him, but even I’ll admit that it’s no match for his. By the time Dove wakes, we’re ready for a third pot. Because of the Christmas season, there are biscuits everywhere for dipping. 

It’s such an odd thing, for all of us to be together. In so many ways we’re exactly who were used to be, just a little more battered and bruised. We all drink coffee now; Dove is medicated; Mariah has the sexiest punk rock hair cut I’ve ever seen, with orange-red highlights; I’m dressed like a disney channel stoner character, with worse acne than I ever had at 15. We’re a little scared of each other, for good reasons. We keep surprising eachother– I hate to think of it, but I know there’s a lot more hurt in our future. 

Dove has been living with our parents for a little less than 2 months. My old room/dad’s new office is a green wonderland now. My bookshelf is still in there, an obstacle that kept that wall the same pepto-bismal pink that I chose in 2014. Half of the books are there for children’s illustration study. I hope I don’t disappoint the little girl that collected them.

Dove’s move-in isn’t a permanent solution. They’ve got a life in Kansas city, a degree to fall back, real job experience. Dove’s never been really healthy like other people– like all of us kids. They’ve always worked hard, always chased success, and the stack of illnesses have eaten them too generously. I’m not going to go into all the details– I don’t even know all of them– but it’s time that Dove rested. Whether this place is ideal for the mental recuperation, I don’t know if I can say, but they’re gaining weight, working on their projects. My parents see no issue with using their deadname, but I express more frustration about this than they do. They’re so much more peaceful now. 

I can see the change– shockingly so. For me, it feels overnight. I haven’t known Dove to be this kind, this open, in over a decade. My body is still afraid of them, a process that will take time. But Mariah plays cards with them at night. We all talk about tv shows. My all do our best not to curse in front of our parents, and get on each other’s nerves. We’re using up a lot of Kleenxes. All of us kids are allergic to the house– this isn’t a metaphor, we’re sneezing our brains out. For whatever reason, all three of us are having an allergic reaction to the walls themselves. It’s an old house with old dust. We’ve been popping Allegra tablets like candy.

 It’s a strange, dream-like muscle memory, being together. We’ve never been real big emotional talkers. It usually ends in a mess. I know this mess needs untangled. But for now I am happy to drink coffee together– it’s not too hard to fall into our old ways when we all know that outside, there are houses built by smaller, more frightened versions of ourselves.