The Marvelous Cycle Twenty-seven years ago, the coffee shop, Rao’s had just opened. It was a noisy, fragrant, gem of a coffee shop where they roasted the beans in the building and there was the constant grating sound of beans being turned into grounds, but it was novel, our own version of the coffee shop in Friends or Fraiser . I remember because, during the Caesarian birth of my twins, the anesthesiologist was talking about the cup of coffee he had bought there. Simultaneously, my daughter shifted away from the newly incised opening, and my son emerged first, and them my daughter. Luckily, it was not a surprise twin birth, we had learned about the twins eleven days earlier, so we were, at least were a little, prepared. Twenty-seven seems at once, not that long ago, and an entire lifetime ago. I was attending the same university where I now work. I was teaching English classes, eating Chinese food, and yes, drinking cappuccinos and lates in the sensual extravagance of air scented wit