Peter McKay

As my father got older, like a lot of men, he became more finicky about certain things. One of them was his morning coffee. A true caffeine fiend, every night before bed, Pop would set the coffee maker, along with two cups, a spoon and sugar bowl, in exactly the right position, so he could get his fix as quickly as possible. To mess with his coffee setup was to risk sudden death. At the time, I thought he was nuts, and every once in a while, I'd move a spoon or cup just to see what it would do to Pop's blood pressure.

But as the years have gone by, and I've gotten older myself, I've gotten more and more dependent on java to get my heart started in the morning. That's why it's very important to me to have a coffee maker with a timer, set to go off exactly 10 minutes before I come down each morning. Then I get everything ready, so I can get the caffeine into my veins with as little effort as possible. I'll stumble around the kitchen, eyes half closed like an angry mole, until that first heavenly sip. After that, I'll still be grumpy, but at least I'll be awake.

That's why Saturday a couple weeks ago became such a big thing around here. It was a rainy day, the kind where you can't rake leaves because they weigh a thousand pounds, and its best to just do something inside. We decided to go through the house cleaning out things. I went in the attic, and my wife concentrated on the kitchen.

A few hours later, I came downstairs to find the kitchen looking great. She'd moved everything around, but it was clean, shiny and streamlined, the way it would look if we were trying to sell the house and convince some sucker this was the way it always looked. But something was off.

"What happened to the coffee maker?" I asked, looking at the spot by the sink where it always sat.

She pointed across the room to a small counter under the cabinets.

"It looks so much better over there," she said.

I took a deep breath. The coffee maker was now all the way on the other side of the kitchen. I could be a jerk and insist that it be moved back, or I could just go with the flow. I was still trying to decide when my wife said, "Please don't be a jerk about this. I want it over there, and if you truly loved me, you'd want me to be happy, wouldn't you?" I sighed.

My wife offered to make the coffee the next couple of nights, and I forgot the whole thing — until the third night when I went to make the coffee myself. You have to pour the water into the top of the unit and put the ground coffee in the top, too. But the shelf she'd picked was wedged tightly under a cabinet, which meant I would have to unplug the coffee maker, carry it over to the sink, fill it up, carry it back, plug it in and then reprogram the clock and timer every single night. I called to my wife, who came running.

"You knew that I couldn't get at the coffee maker under here," I said, shaking my head, "This is so not happening!" I picked up the coffee maker and moved it back to its rightful place near the sink. My wife just frowned, then spun on her heels and walked out.

The next night, I went to make the coffee and found the pot had been unplugged and moved back under the cabinet. I yanked it out, put it back beside the sink, cursing the whole time.

The next night, the same thing happened. The coffee maker was wedged back under the cabinets. I roared out to my wife again, who didn't come running. I had to go find her in the living room where she was watching TV.

"How long," I said, "are you going to do this?"

"Every day," she said, not looking away from the TV. "Every day until one of us dies or gives up."

Every night since, and I suppose every night for the rest of my life, I'll be lugging the coffee maker across the kitchen, reprogramming it and grumbling to myself. Somewhere up in heaven, Pop is looking down, remembering all the times I moved his cups and spoons, and laughing his angel rear end off.

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