The spring ahead has changed my mornings. I go to bed later and get up later. My coffee and bagel have morphed into brunch. The dogs wake me up. Nala cries so I crawl down stairs, let them both out and go back to bed. They join me later. We sleep until Nala wakes me up by whacking me, totally unnecessary as the back door is open. I give in and get up to face the day with bags under my eyes and a terrible need for coffee.

When I was a kid, cocoa was my morning drink of record. For my brother, it was tea. My mother always made the tea in a small ceramic teapot covered in pink flowers. The cocoa came cup by cup. Some days we had cereal while other days we had eggs, but we always had tea and cocoa. My favorite breakfast was a soft boiled egg served in the yellow, chicken egg cup and surrounded by strips of toast for dunking. My least favorite was oatmeal. It was palatable only because of the milk and the sugar we put on top, mostly the sugar. My mother was fortifying us for the trek through the extremes of weather to school.

I don’t know when I started drinking coffee. I believe it was in high school when I left so early for the bus I didn’t have time for breakfast so I bought coffee before school. It quickly supplemented the cocoa. By college, my friends and I started every morning over cups of coffee at the canteen and a race to finish the cross puzzle.

In Ghana, the coffee is almost universally bad. The only time I had a cup of real, as in brewed, coffee and real milk, not in a can, was at a resort on the ocean in Beyin near Nzulezo on one of my trips back. There was a real French press on the table. I wanted to borrow it.

I drank instant coffee during my two years in Ghana. Every morning I’d have one cup at breakfast; actually it was more of a stein than a cup, a huge amount of coffee. Breakfast was always two fried eggs and two pieces of toast. I’d have another cup during a break from teaching. I’d sit in the front yard and watch the little kids going to school. I was an attraction, the white lady. I always greeted them and they returned the greeting.

I love coffee. I just don’t love flavored coffee or instant coffee. Call me a purist if you will.