Coffee with CeCe Lanigan.

For years I have been sharing morning coffee with my sister in law, CeCe any time we were together.

This weekend was no exception. I visited my brother and CeCe in Florida and as always, we had coffee. I've never given much thought to this. It's just what we have always done. We wake up, we have coffee together. We talk about life.

This Friday morning, I walked out to their breezeway to partake in our morning coffee ritual. As I walked around trying to find where CeCe was (because she is always up earlier than me), I stopped to think about how long we have been doing our "coffee ritual". I realized it's been around 25 years. That's a lot of coffee. Twenty Five years of drinking coffee and solving all the world's problems. I had never stopped to think about this and it made me smile.

When we first started this morning ritual we were living in Florida. I had moved to Florida and they were kind enough to let me live with them until I got settled. CeCe was a home health nurse at the time, so she was normally doing paperwork while we talked and drank our coffee. The rest of the family did their morning routines and would stop to ask us a question, complain about the bathroom being occupied or tell us a quick story about what their school day consisted of. Never a dull moment. CeCe and I remained the constant.

Our kids were still fairly young so they were often the topic of discussion. We would discuss their friends, their grades in school, their childhood relationships and their general behavior. We talked about other family member as well and how their lives were going. What was Christopher doing, what was Karen doing?

Often, we talked about our own past. Funny things we had done, mistakes we had made (there were a couple) or lessons we had learned.

At the time, I didn't realize how important these conversations were. I moved back to St. Louis after a short period of time, so our morning coffee conversations became less frequent. But we would still have them any time we were together. This was our constant. Although they became few and far between for a while, they never lacked interesting content.

This past weekend, 25 years later, we were together. Drinking our morning coffee. Some of our conversations have changed but so many of them stay the same. We've added conversations about grandchildren. And farming. CeCe and my brother Al have since retired. Well, somewhat. They now farm a few acres of their land and grow their own food. This includes enough for Jim and me. Any time we are there, we bring home anything from corn to purple hull peas... to potatoes.... to tomatoes..... the list goes on. I love leaving their house with a cooler ...or sack of home grown goodies.

We've also added conversations about the many places we have both traveled around the world. CeCe and Al have traveled quite extensively as have Jim and I. We love to compare stories of places we have both been, or give recommendations on where the others should go. To date, Ireland is still the favorite for all of us. Imagine that. I don't want to deny CeCe her blood nationality, but she is truly an Irishwoman. Note: we have also had Irish coffee in the evenings!

Although our conversations have adjusted over the years, they remain the same. I feel we have both given each other so much support, so much wisdom and more importantly .... so much love. I look forward to many more years of coffee with CeCe because together, we can solve all the world's problems!

Much love to CeCe for the many years of coffee !!!