Savor. Feel your heart rate slow. Drink in the moment because you’ll only have these sixty seconds once. Last September Larry and I spent nearly a month in Italy, savoring the beauty of a slow paced life. One of the habits we quickly adopted during our six days of biking in the Dolomite mountains of northern Italy, just below Austria, was the mid morning ritual of cappuccino.

We would eat a hearty breakfast buffet at our hotel each morning before mounting our wheels, but biking is exertional. Several hours in, our hawkish eyes would zone in on that little bakery/coffee shop in the tiny town we were passing through. With a hand signal or a call, our bikes would simultaneously turn into the shop. Of course our coffee beverages seemed lonely without a pastry, so they often accompanied our frothed milk and espresso. We would regale the adventures of the past few hours, luxuriating in the privilege of having these moments of beauty together. Refreshed, we would pull up our (padded) bike shorts and wheel off.

Our cappuccino habit, complete with the slow cherishing of each day’s charms, continued throughout the rest of our Italian trip. We even tried our own hand at making our beloved beverage with foreign equipment at our air bnb.

At this mature stage of our lives, Larry and I have committed to give each other experiences as gifts, rather than purchasing more stuff. (One of us is not very good at keeping to this rule). The day after Christmas, we found ourselves in Sarasota, FL with time on our hands. He suggested we gift ourselves with an espresso maker, so we could recreate our new cappuccino ritual at home. Who was I to deny such a request?! We swam like fish upstream through crowds of people in a mall to Williams & Sonoma.

We stood in line waiting to talk to the most effective salesperson. Diane said she’d worked for the store for 20 years. At a recent milestone birthday, her husband told her to pick out any piece of equipment found in the company. You guessed it: she bought this Breville espresso maker! She demonstrated the ease of this self guiding machine. She made us a fabulous cappuccino. Of course we ordered one to ship to our home.

Several weeks later it arrived in a very large box with many moving parts. I assembled it as best I could and we tried reading the directions. Where was Diane when you needed her?! She’d made it look so easy. My niece Kami, who has mastered the fine art of the specialty coffee beverage, told me which Italian espresso beans to order. Larry and i attempted a few trial runs. Someone kept pressing buttons and someone else tried very hard to do things exactly like the directions stated. Marital harmony was threatened and the machine sat lonely for some days.

One evening after a rousing round of pickleball, our friends Zach and Cameron made us some nice coffee beverages with our new purchase. Cameron once worked at a coffee shop, but each machine is different. My sister Sharon has an espresso maker and was determined to unlock the secrets of our machine. She and Larry labored long while my visiting siblings had breakfast and told stories around the table.

Last month our dear friends, Raz and Katy were at our home, part of a surprise my keeper-of-a-husband planned for my birthday. Raz owns this exact same espresso machine; he got busy adjusting, tweaking and demonstrating and now we are in business!

I can make a double espresso with lovely caramel colored crema on top. I can heat and/or foam milk to add to your specifications. And I can prepare an Americano, an espresso diluted with hot water. I am still very much a novice but am practicing daily. And we are savoring!

I love our cappuccino ritual; it is a reminder to squeeze joy from every day and appreciate life’s simple pleasures.