Just the other day I broke one of my favorites, boo, but the others are holding up. The Chinese-lady one’s lid is chipped but not fatally. Mugs aplenty, all in all. And we have the two coffeemakers (a big one for crowds), the grinder, the ceramic pour-over thing we used for a while, on a no-plastics kick, and even, buried away, the cloth filters I made. Also our tea kettle, dented, a glorious gleaming red, and our proper sturdy teapot.

Add in—obviously—the fine sugar and the chunky raw, and the actual coffees, and the bagged teas,

Monday when I visited, the mother said she likes tea, coffee not so much. Besides mugs, the refugee family had been provided packets of Lipton, ordinary black. “Is it good?” I asked. Because what did I know? Pleasing to her, I meant. Not too unfamiliar, unpalatable. They had a can of coffee, too, but maybe not filters, because on the stove was a kettle holding a small amount of milk, speckled with black. Pepper? I wondered. Peppered milk? Then I understood. Somebody’d tried to brew coffee. The father is the coffee drinker.

I spied a couple of those hotel-type packets of pre-measured coffee on the counter, near the 5-cup size coffee maker, which is how we were able to proceed without a filter.

The coffeemaker quite enchanted the mother. Far as I could tell, it was her first time ever, dumping in the water. Her first time ever, punching the On button.

I don’t know why that’s any sort of achievement, though.

Some woman coaching her through the steps, like the machine is a matter of brilliance, when that woman doesn’t know a thing. Never had to run to her husband’s food-distribution office to tell his supervisors he’d been taken from their home by soldiers, the older children looking on. Never had to wait out the days he stayed missing, both arms broken. Never had to wash up on a strange shore, at the mercy of hearty-talking, expansive foreigners swollen up with their generosity.

If I were the mother I might recoil, not confront so graciously that woman’s blithe, do-gooder face.