THE POSTSCRIPT, Carrie Classon

I have a tradition.

Like most traditions, it didn’t start out as a tradition. I bought a beautiful coffee cup to sit on the little coffee heater on my desk while I wrote in San Miguel. I think having a beautiful coffee cup is as important as having fresh flowers on my desk while I’m writing. If I’m going to sit in one place for hours at a time, I need nice things to look at while I’m doing it.

If anyone asked me for advice on how to write a book, I wouldn’t bother to talk to them about grammar or plot. I’d tell them they need a good place to write, because it’s going to take a very long time. Sitting hunched up at the kitchen table where you have to pack up your stuff every time a meal is served is no good. It’s important to have a place to do one’s work — especially if the work you’re doing doesn’t really look like work much of the time. It’s important to have fresh flowers and a beautiful coffee cup filled with coffee that is kept at precisely the right temperature, even if it is neglected for 15 minutes at a time.

So that is what I do. I find a nice cup, and I sit with it for several hours, seven days a week.

But after I’ve used that cup for almost two months and it’s time to go back to the U.S., I find I cannot bear to part with it. So I bring the cup home and I use it there. Then it comes time to return to Mexico, and of course I don’t travel with a ceramic coffee cup. So when I get back to our apartment, I buy a lovely new cup. And again, I bond with it. And again, I bring it home.

You probably now have an idea of how my cupboard has filled with coffee cups.

This is a situation that bothers my husband, Peter. Peter is very conscious of clutter. In my defense, I am staunchly anti-clutter as well — I just don’t regard my collection of beautiful coffee cups as clutter. (Because, by now, it is a collection.) I also don’t see a way out of my conundrum.

“We could get rid of our other cups,” I suggested.

“I like our other cups,” Peter said. “They are a nice size for company.”

“We could use my Mexican cups when company comes.”

Peter did not answer. I could tell he liked the idea of serving coffee at Christmas and on other occasions in the small, more practical matching cups we keep in an upper cupboard. They are nice cups, I admit. I just like my Mexico cups more. Those little matching cups never once helped me write a book.

So we are at an impasse. Yesterday, I bought my cup for this trip, and like every previous cup, I am convinced it is the best one ever. This cup has an orange handle and vertical columns that look like stained glass running up the sides. I know it is going to help me as I write. I know I will never want to part with it. And so, I worry.

I once saw a program on hoarding, where a psychologist was trying to help someone whose house was filled to overflowing. The psychologist pointed to a cupboard filled with dishes and more dishes piled on the counter.

“You just see coffee cups,” she explained. “The hoarder sees individual experiences attached to every cup.”

And that got me worried.

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