An ode to the coffee mug

The thing I will miss the most when I go off to college is my family’s collection of coffee mugs.

The dark brown cabinet with glass door and old rusted handle,

Stacks on stacks of mugs crowd the cabinet

Why are they always a slightly different size and shape?

Mugs have so many uses!

Holding coffee is the most obvious, though I don’t think I have ever used one for that purpose.

The coffee mug is the perfect choice of container for Cape Cod chips in my house.

Therefore, I would say that we go through at least ten each day as a family.

It takes multiple trips to bring them down to the kitchen at the end of each day. 

A coffee mug is also used to hold my assortment of pens, pencils and highlighters on my desk.

Loyal, it says, representing the qualities found in the witches or wizards of the Hufflepuff house.

I am reminded of my childhood every time I pick out a pencil to do my Calculus homework, wishing I could have received my Hogwarts acceptance letter at age 11.

Collecting mugs is definitely a family tradition whenever we travel.

Half of our mugs have the name of a city we have visited,

And the other half are random mugs we have collected along the way.

Whenever I pick one up, I am transported back to the place where we got it. 

Sometimes I am reminded of the cool breeze of the ocean in Key West. 

Other times, I can still smell the pine from our campsite in Colorado. 

We have mugs that remind us of our favorite movies, like the Goonies or Captain America. 

Personalized mugs always make me laugh, 

“Princess Boogie needs her coffee” reminds me how cranky my dad is in the morning. 

My mindset has always been that you can never have enough coffee mugs, 

But I think at this point we probably do have enough.