I was sitting in Sunday School, sipping decaff coffee from a paper cup, when I unintentionally visualized a cigarette being tapped into an ashtray. For many years I have closely associated coffee and cigarettes, even though I've never smoked, even though no one in my immediate family smokes. It isn't because the two are paired so often in songs, though they are. It isn't because of that first scene in Stephen King's *The Shining.* I realized right then that it is because my grandmother used to sit at her kitchen table with her coffee and her cigarettes. She would smoke, and stir her coffee, rapidly with a silver spoon.
My grandfather, her husband, used to sit at that same table with his red-backed playing cards, playing a game of solitaire. She had her crosswords. He had his cards. I don't do crosswords, or play cards alone. But I remember the cigarette being tapped out into a heavy glass ashtray. I remember the cards arrayed on the kitchen table.
P.S. It's my wedding anniversary today. Thirteen years together.
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