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Today I emptied the dishwasher and I filled it all at once. First time, in ten years that I did not take a 20 minute rest between the two tasks. It is now one task again. This is not to say that when the humidity is high or my back screams to me that I need to sit down, put up my feet and read a book I will not listen. I will and once gain feel like the slow tortoise I have become.

Still, I think I took a good step forward-no longer facing the task with dread, but with the knowledge I can do it.

Ten years ago, I had a massive heart attack and three strokes. I had no use of my left side. I could not walk. I could not feed myself. I could not negotiate going to the bathroom by myself. Before that point, my husband and daughters were told I had a negative 17% chance of living. I had been unconscious. I had not responded to light or to many other triggers used in assessment..

I don’t tell this for sympathy, empathy or anything else but simply to tell you that I understand the struggle people have when recovering from heart attacks, strokes, and cancer. Yes, cancer. During all of this, I was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Luckily, it was a very early detection so that learning to walk could come first. Then, I could wait the 90 days needed to recover from the heart attack and participate in cardio rehabilitation so that I would be stronger when the surgery happened.

All of this background leads me to today when I accomplished something that many of us take to be a given- unloading and loading the dishwasher.  It does us good to remember to be grateful and thankful for what we have every day of our lives because in a wink of an eye all that can change.

My point is not to be depressing but to let everyone know that should a chronic illness come your way it is not necessary to stop living or stop working toward goals. When you look back to yesterday, and believe me, look back one day.  Do not look to what “used to be”.

Your normal is a “new” normal and yours alone because each person’s backpack of a chronic illness is unique to themselves. For some people, recovery comes quickly up to a point and then, it seems to plateau. For others, the path is filled with rocks and tree roots and the time it takes is much longer.

I tell people that heart disease is customized and each person’s list of symptoms is unique. It is the same with strokes. I regained my ability to walk. I eat with my left hand once again. I type using every finger on my right hand and my pointer finger on my left.

Today, I used those six fingers to share that I can now do one more thing that has eluded me for ten years. I know it probably doesn’t seem like much, but in my world, it proves that I can still achieve more.     

Don’t judge me on our taste in coffee, but Tim and I love Starbucks French Roast. For a month and a half we have been unable to procure it at any of our local Starbucks.

The answer to the question varies every time.  ‘We need to order more’.  ‘We are not selling French roast any more’.  ‘I don’t know why we don’t have it, we just don’t’.

Tim went to their website where it is still listed as available.

And then, yesterday I decided to persist in finding out more of an answer when I stopped in to buy Komodo Dragon since, of course, no French roast.

After the cashier finally caught the manager’s attention, she told me that they were downsizing on the kinds of coffee beans sold.

I replied the selection is still listed as available on Starbucks website. Her answer relayed through said cashier: “We shut down the on-line store before Christmas.” My reply: “Not the on-line store. The website”.  Again relayed by the cashier. “You would have to contact the website about that. I don’t know anything about the website.”

At this point, I asked her to stop multi-tasking and relaying everything through the poor cashier who I am sure felt like the pickle in the middle and just answer my question as to why French roast was chosen to be deleted from the offerings.

She then told me that the beans used for French roast had no consistent market for buying, and therefore, it was eliminated.

I thanked her and left with my purchases sans the steel straw my daughter asked me too buy.  The manager told me that the item had been discontinued two years prior  as too dangerous to sale.

After I left, I recall reading an article somewhere, sometime that the coffee market would become exceedingly unstable due to geopolitical reasons. I don’t recall where I read it, but it was probably The New Yorker, The Economist, or The week.

I wonder if others are finding it difficult to find their favorite bean from their favorite roaster because of geopolitical reasons.

Where should I go to find a comparable smooth taste of French roast? Or am I to continue my search for a “good” cup of morning coffee made at home?  My only consolation is the number of coffee shop selections within a mile of my home-Tremont: Civilization and The Loop, Old Brooklyn:  Coffee Coffee Coffee and Metropolitan Café and my all time favorite Gypsy Beans in Detroit Shoreway.

With all that goodness so close to home, why do I yearn for that home brewed cup of coffee?  

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