I Bought a Coffee Mug

I broke my favorite coffee mug in the kitchen. I also broke my previous favorite mug, several years ago, probably also by dropping it on the kitchen floor. That one had already survived its handle getting broken off when it was banged against the sink. I'd superglued the handle back on, and miraculously, it remained in a state of repair for many years and through many dishwasher cycles. I don't know how that was possible in the most thin, fragile, load-bearing part of the mug, but I treasured that thing.

Both of my favorite mugs were handmade ceramic. They had decorations made from a wax resist in the glaze, which left the underlying red-brown clay artfully exposed in silhouette-like shapes. The older mug was glazed in gradations of deep green, with the form of an evergreen tree on the side; I'd bought it when I lived in the redwoods of Arcata, California. The newer mug was really new, just six months old, and had a flower pattern against a field of freckled, sand-colored glaze. Both were made by local ceramic artists selling at street fairs. I hate buying mass-produced mugs from retail shops, no matter how pretty they might be. Mugs feel like a thing you should always buy secondhand unless you find one that's extra special. Like children's clothing, they are easily destroyed by their owners, and are consigned to thrift shops in bulk when someone finally decides to clean out that overcrowded cabinet. People gift you cutesy ones without knowing your taste, and you force yourself to use them a few times before going back to your favorite. You feel guilty buying new, knowing that secondhand options abound, even though the mug-industrial complex is surely less destructive than the modern clothing business.

I try not to buy many coffee mugs in general, because it's too easy to fill a cupboard with them, taking up an amount of space disproportionate to how often they get used in a day. I don't have hooks or any other clever storage option; they just get stacked on top of each other, which is tricky since they all have differently sized bases and openings. Mugs are not meant to be in a matching set unless you're operating an Airbnb or staging your house for selling. They should be collected, like various species of butterfly captured from a meadow. They should be souvenirs. I still have a mug advertising Old Town Sacramento, from childhood, and a Tigger mug that was purchased at Disney World when I turned eighteen. Insulated travel mugs are a slightly different beast, but they're also collectibles: I have a travel mug from New York, and another one that reminds me of the favorite coffee shop in the neighborhood my husband and I formerly lived in. My special mugs are relics that survive the occasional kitchen purge until they get irreversibly chipped or stained.

Breaking my favorite mug recently gave me an excuse to hunt for a new one, although our household didn't need it. My husband and I drink a fair amount of coffee and had no shortage of vessels, but there was a void in the Flowery/Girly Mug department. I found one while shopping in Portland—not handmade, but had the virtues of being sold by a local chain (Powell's) and designed by a Northwest Indigenous artist. It features a hummingbird rendered in purple tones against a speckled white background, and a solid periwinkle interior. Instantly it reminded me of another souvenir I used to have, a cute purple T-shirt with hummingbirds that I'd bought at the natural history museum in New York. I buy few travel souvenirs and try to choose them carefully, so I was disappointed when the "large" shirt turned out to be too small for my curvy body. So this charming new mug was bound to patch two tiny holes in my heart.

I couldn't wait to drink coffee from it the next morning, and I wondered why this felt like such a delightful treat. Why do mugs feel so precious and personal to coffee and tea drinkers? Coffee is a miracle drink, yes, but it's also a mundane commodity that people consume every day—practically a necessity just to get revved up for work. It's not like I'm coming in from a frigid ski slope, warming my hands around a mug of hot liquid, inhaling a perfect curlicue of steam like I'm in a commercial. I'm typically nursing a homemade americano at my desk, keeping it on a USB-powered mug warmer that's probably dangerously close to the keyboard and mouse. I barely look at the cup itself, just lift it to my lips while I'm working.

I suppose we need something to jazz up the appearance of the brown bean water we drink. Decorated mugs are like any other pretty things we surround ourselves with: curated to help create a sense of place and confer a touch of joy on ordinary days. I keep my childhood Sacramento mug, emblazoned with my name, at my cubicle to feel slightly more cozy on days when I work away from home. If that one can last 30+ years without breaking, surely I can make my new hummingbird mug last a while.