For many people, the best part of waking up is coffee in their cup. That would be true for my parents, too … if they hadn’t been brewing under a curse that only Juan Valdez himself could have inflicted.Most of us think coffee can be great: the aroma and warmth draw us together for breaks during the day, and it helps us start our mornings on a collectively better (and livelier) note.Coffee can unite us. For my parents, however, their most recent coffee maker almost tore them apart.Mom woke up most mornings for the better part of two months scolding Dad under her breath and building resentment because there was water all over the counter top. She thought Dad poured water into the tank sloppily when he was preparing coffee the night before. Dad probably wondered why she spent her mornings towel-drying the counters.They finally figured out that the mechanism which carries water from the tank to the grounds was spraying water all over.Mom said, "If it was a shower head, I wouldn’t complain, but this was ridiculous."They returned it and Mom and Dad have had dry counter tops and pleasant mornings for about a week. … But they aren’t betting it will last. They’ve been through so many coffee makers that they’ve started asking people and taking notes on what make and model of coffee makers they use. Everyone they’ve asked reports they’ve happily used the same coffee pot for years — all different ones.They’ve had coffee makers that are so loud they couldn’t watch morning TV, coffee makers with timers that are difficult to program, coffee makers with faulty timers and coffee makers that took too long to brew. They’ve had Mr. Coffees, a Norelco, a Braun, a free one that came from ordering gourmet coffee, and a few Black and Deckers.They had one whose heating element went out and their coffee wasn’t really" cooking" through the grounds, so they kept adding scoops — hoping for better tasting coffee. Then there was the one whose carafe had to be so strategically placed for the drip to continue. It had a sensor that allowed for pulling the carafe away during the brewing process to pour a cup. By taking the carafe away, it would stop the drip. The problem was, Mom and Dad kept waking up to a counter, lower cupboards, and floor doused with coffee and chunks of grounds because they didn’t place the carafe "just so" and it sensed that there was no carafe in which to drip. So, the process backed up and overflowed the basket holding the grounds.For the past five years, whenever I go home to visit, it’s fun to check on their latest investment in what should be a simple appliance. The bedtime ritual usually involves a comic routine of both of them hovering over the coffee pot, carefully preparing for our upcoming morning’s brew.Maybe they sip and say "ah" with a little more enthusiasm than the rest of us because they have to work harder for their reward.