Beverage

Life recently sent me shopping for a vehicle.  My old van was a 2002; the new one is a 2010.  This kid carrying, stuff hauling bit of my life has a bunch of buttons and beeps I have to figure out.  And, there are fifteen cup holders.  In total the vehicle safely holds a seat-belted seven people.  How many drinks does each person need?  Apparently two, with a spare third as a perk for the driver.  I queried other van driving folks in my life (not exactly scientific, I know) and found that they too have such an amenity.  It perplexes me to consider that multiple options to rest a beverage seem a standard feature on modern minivans.  Somebody did some research and found our beverage habits to be important to our comfort. 

Dictionary.com defines the noun beverage as “any potable liquid, especially one other that water, as tea, coffee, beer, or milk.”

Beverages are important.  Today’s musings took root on a morning when I left the house with three:  water, protein smoothie, and a perfectly opaque black decaffeinated coffee.  I invented a new use for my sectioned cloth wine shopping bag – perfect to carry several lidded drinks upright.  These were necessary beverage rations for the morning and afternoon ahead of me.  So, I get it.  We need lots of cup holders.  I wanted at first to think my abundant cup holders were a useless indulgence.  Then I used them - all three allotted me.   

Beverages matter.  They can support us or poison us.  A beverage can be essential as water although is more often defined as something a step up the “special” ladder from H20 as in tea, coffee, beer, or milk (the favorites listed in the previous definition).   People work to provide the perfect beverage for holidays and celebratory occasions, matching wines and kid friendly punches to their respective places at tables and parties.  A certain, specifically offered potable liquid might soothe, supplicate, sedate or intoxicate.  Another beverage might be sipped to energize or offer a meal’s worth of liquid nutrition.  A beverage is crucial for a toast.  We need the properly prescribed ancient drink to consecrate at an altar.  One historically high-octane beverage distilled a hard and fast living for folks scraping life from mountains, fire and corn.

 

Why ponder the beverage?  Maybe because for most of us it is often abundant, easy to prepare and carry.  And when not, what feeling other than thirst gives us greater connection with longing?  Tangible.  Insistent.  Physical.  Spiritual.       
 

I scrounged online for these two beverage thoughts - one a laugh, one a lesson. 

 

Our founding fathers would have never tolerated any of
this crap.  For God’s sake, they were blowing people’s
heads off because they put a tax on their breakfast beverage. 
And it wasn’t even coffee.  
                                                                               - Dennis Miller

 

If we eat any food, or drink any beverage, we must recite a
blessing over them before and after.                                                                              
                                                                               - Shmuel Y. Agnon