Coffee has been an important plant in my mother’s family garden for generations. The ritual of growing coffee trees, picking coffee cherries when ripe, peeling and drying the seeds, roasting, grinding – by hand or with tools – and then finally brewing a cup of warm coffee to sip on in the mornings, or to offer to guests who come to share company. The island my mother grew up on in Guyana, where she currently lives for part of the year now, was always abundant in coffee trees. Coffee exists as a the welcoming drink for all who arrive on Limon Island. My mother talks of waking up early as a child to have coffee with her mom. That being the only quiet, still, one-on-one time she could often find with her. My maternal grandmother’s mother was also said to have had a deep love of her morning coffee rituals. When I visited Limon this past December, I picked the coffee cherries and marvelled at them in my hands. I reflect on the abundance that continues to grow in the same land my Grandmother grew her coffee beans. I think of my deep love of coffee, my morning ritual with it — using it as a daily meditation on our connection to the land, the elements, and Indigenous ways of being. I imagine these beans as the connector between the land, the present moment, and now — my mother’s maternal lineage.
