It takes so little…

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons. – T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"

It really takes so very little to amuse me.

Yesterday, I got an email from a favorite bookstore in town: "we’d like to name a drink after you."

Lest we get too carried away with the sheer excitement of it all and before we give in to an exaggerated sense of self-importance that centers solely on espresso drinks (and before we resort to always speaking of our own self in the third person), it’s important to know they are creating specialty coffee drinks not just for moi, but for authors or other people hosting events at the bookstore.

Since I host a "Bridging Differences" book club there on the first Monday of each month, I am One of the Chosen to be Memorialized in Caffeine. Though I suppose "memorialized" is not the right word, since I’m still above ground, but I have a way wicked headache right behind my left eye (is that one the eye to my soul? hope not) and can’t think of what the right word would be.

I laughed when I read the email. It’s clear to me now. After all those years of seeking, my whole life has been directed to this one moment: The Patti Digh Coffee Drink.

I asked friends for suggestions–The Digh Drip, Tea to Digh For, and the Patti Depp (smile) were among my favorites…I sent back a real answer (a boring and staid drink with earl grey tea at its center) and also a joke answer, the one that immediately came to mind when I read their email, like one of those twenty-word-uber-sophisticated -and-very-complicated-orders I heard at the Starbuck’s on 19th Street last week in Washington, D.C. You know the ones–you’re ordering a small black drip (I refuse to say tall, grande and venti, just for spite) and the woman in front of you is ordering War and Peace in cup form. (Speaking of War and Peace, there’s a new translation out that is supposed to be spectacular and the book jacket itself is gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous).

Which one of my suggestions did they choose? Need you ask?

I hope you’ll come visit Asheville, stop by Malaprop’s, and ask for the Patti Digh next time you’re in town…It’ll be the best double-skinny-soy-vanilla-free-trade- emotionally-intelligent-diversity-friendly-but-not-politically-correct-vegan- carbon-neutral-latte you’ve ever had!

I wonder if I could get a football stadium named after me? Or maybe a decaffeinated coffee table? Or a sandwich? The Digh on Rye?