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How to Make a Latte
While also not falling apart
Pour milk — usually 2% — into the metal pitcher. Don’t pour too much or there will be waste. Don’t pour too little or you won’t fill the cup all the way.
Look at the smooth, white liquid and think about your childhood. About eating Barbie cereal after sleepovers when you were eight years old, drinking strawberry milkshakes from McDonald’s, milk mustaches at school lunch.
Put the pitcher on the steam wand — be careful not to touch the bottom — and pull the lever. Pull the pitcher down until you hear that paper ripping sound. That’s called aerating. Let it aerate for 1 to 3 seconds.
Listen to that sound, ripping, sucking, tearing. Thrashing through the milk like life has thrashed through your dreams. Pull your shots, one, two, three. You know if someone is having a bad day by the number of shots they ordered. Put the cup under the spout to catch them. Watch them fall — the hot, brown liquid, the creama, the head. Watch the liquid hit the paper cup. Wait. Let your mind wander a million miles away — to anywhere but here. To a time when you thought there would be more to life than this. To a place you felt happy and hopeful instead of broken down and defeated.
Pull the pitcher off of the wand, wipe it off, blow out the steam.
