Long ago I worked as the first communications director for Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. I love coffee and I loved living in Vermont’s capital, Montpelier, but I didn’t love the job. I spent hours writing and printing tri-fold brochures that included text about the right grind for espresso and extolled the virtues of arabica beans. I was 23 and my colleagues, while kind and dedicated to the business, seemed ancient and foreign. They had spouses, toddlers, and colonials. I didn’t have any friends. The man I would eventually marry and I took turns traveling to each other on weekends.
During the work week, I busied myself with a youth-focused project I designed called The Drama Leadership Program. I convinced the Montpelier Recreation Department to pay me to teach the program to seventh graders a couple nights a week. I had nothing else to do and it gave me a chance to immerse myself in young people’s lives, cementing my desire to go into counseling work.
We put together a 45-minute show dramatizing poetry and novel excerpts; I remember one poem included fireflies and the kids made the directorial decision to wear “flashlights on our butts” and run around the stage. That was the leadership part. They also wrote and printed the program, put up flyers around town, and agreed on a Vermonty wardrobe: green top and black pants. 
So, I was especially excited when the parenting lit mag Coffee+Crumbs decided to publish a piece I wrote about navigating the question, “Do you have any children?” because it features a theater production metaphor within Cedar Run, one of my favorite bakery-cafes here in the Adirondacks. It’s a place that has some of the best coffee… from Vermont.
You can sip the story here: Coffee+Crumbs
