pas·teur·i·za·tion

A Covid-era meditation on safe consumption

(n) "the partial sterilization of a product, such as milk or wine, to make it safe for consumption and improve its keeping quality"

1. The women behind the counter don’t smile, not at this cafe inside my favorite local bookstore. In my thirties, I ordered straight from the menu, cowed by the idea of flaunting expectation. But something refracted when I turned the decade. I stopped hiding my desire. Could you go ahead and brew the flavored coffee for me? The women behind the counter pause a beat. Also, I’d like to replace the side of hummus with guacamole. Oh and, The half-and-half from the fridge, please? These are big steps. The women never say “No.” I go farther, inquire into their well-being. Try to crack fissures in their ice as well as mine.

2. I literally can’t stomach the half-and-half that comes warm in those tiny, sealed plastic cups. Like the juice-and-wafer shots everyone is taking for communion these pandemic days, sealed as tight as Jesus’s tomb. I need the cream in my coffee poured fresh from the real-deal source. I mean, obviously the cow, but also the coated cardboard container from the fridge, folded and torn open at the top. Give me milk that hasn’t been dehydrated first or give me misery in my gut.

3. The grape juice in the communion cups, that cardboard wafer sealed across the top, does not actually turn my stomach, even though it’s almost impossible to access. I’ll tell you what does: sermons that miss the good Lord by a hot mile. I keep cringing these days in church, a ball of tension by the end of the service. There are so many bad interpretations. Has the preaching gotten worse since 2016, or have I begun to digest it differently?

4. After my food is ready, the crankiest cafe lady, who is also the owner, ascends to the upper balcony where I sit, delivering my meal instead of waiting for me to figure out that it’s ready down on the counter. It feels like acceptance. Like belonging. “I poured you a water, because I figured you would ask for it at some point.” She is correct. Next to my flavored coffee, a small, silver pitcher filled with cold cream from the fridge. Each of the women has smiled at me twice in the last year, which feels like a win. Once, I said something that made one of them laugh. The fissures widen.

5. Before church is finished the following Sunday, I flee the scene; too much MAGA in the message for me. Racing across the porch, the final-hymn singers still inside worshipping their hearts out, untroubled, I work my thumbnail under the unyielding plastic of the disposable communion cup. When the round disc of God’s cardboard body finally pops free, I am in the car, and the wafer tries to bounce from my fingertip. I imagine having to search for it in the grimy under-seat space of the car. I wait for my family in the passenger seat, and I laugh myself to tears at the idea of Jesus hanging out down there while we drive through our days. I swear I hear Jesus laughing alongside me. When I drink it, I find that the hard-won juice-not-wine is sweet on my tongue. I swear this is where he actually is.

Unsplash: Jacob Bentzinger

Thanks to

Joanna Penn Cooper

’s [Repost] Six (or Seven) Things/A writing exercise.

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