I 
I 
I 
I 
I
I
I
by C. Jeanette Tyson
My plan was
to have a lovely tea.
Jackson and Maddy had come home from school the Friday before Mother's Day
with hand-painted recipe holders in the shape of little flowers.
Here's the recipe that came with them:
Strawberry Iced Tea
1 cup water
1/3 cup sugar
4 cups freshly brewed tea
1 cup strawberry/apple juice
4 whole strawberries
Combine water and sugar in a saucepan and bring to boil, stirring
occasionally. Remove and let stand until cool. Add the tea and juice
to the sugar syrup and stir. Serve over ice. Garnish with strawberry.
I suddenly felt inspired. Sometimes there’s just nothing like a glass of
iced tea. I drank gallons if it growing up. My mother made it with Lipton
tea bags in a big Pyrex measuring cup. There was always tea steeping
on the counter; she made enough to fill every pitcher and old milk jug
around and then woke up and did it again the next day.
No evening on the front porch was complete without a tall, sweating
glass of the amber liquid, napkin wrapped around the bottom. No one
walked through the front door without being offered a glass. And
everyone knew the houses where the tea just wasn’t something you
wanted to drink, where hard water turned it almost black or the sugar
ratio wasn’t quite right.
My teenage rebellion started with taking my tea unsweetened. I’m not
joking.
Then, many moons later, a confirmed coffee-drinker, I found myself
living and working in London. Ah, the Mother of All Tea! The Cradle of
Civilization! I figured the ceremony was something only kept up by the
hotels to keep the tourist trade alive. But that wasn’t quite true. Though
in the office we did not sit down to cucumber sandwiches every day, there
would often be a meeting or a deadline or some matter of great import to
be decided and suddenly everyone would wander off to the kitchen for
“tea” and it would be more than a little while before everyone came back.
This was infuriating, of course, for an American. Why would you sit
down to something that resembles what you had for lunch when you
could grab a candy bar and just keeping going? This was why nothing
got done!
On this side of the pond, now, we are making efforts to take a civilized
moment. Though they’d need a triple espresso to catch up with the
coffee shops, tea shops are proliferating. At the Domain, you can take
a break from free-fall spending, take sanctuary as they say, at The
Steeping Room, which features fine loose-leafed teas from around the
world.
Their web site passes along this lovely quote:
“Meanwhile, let us have a sip of tea. The afternoon glow is brightening
the bamboos, the fountains are bubbling with delight, the soughing of
the pines is heard in our kettle. Let us dream of evanescence, and linger in
the beautiful foolishness of things.”
Okakura Kakuzo, Book of Tea (1906)
The web sites adds you can grab something to go. Such is our life. But
if you go to The Steeping room, do stay, because the tea and scones are
delicious.
For our Mother’s Day Tea, I thought it’d be fun to don merry hats
and go to the park and have tea and cake and just bask in the sunshine
and do nothing but simply exist, as children, and big people sometimes,
are supposed to do.
Then, around 9 pm on Saturday night, my little girl got sick, sick, sick.
Then, about an hour later, my boy got sick, sick, sick. Then my girl got
sick again. Then, an hour later, my boy. Then my girl, then my boy. You
get the picture. This went on until 5 am.
It had to be food poisoning. They groaned softly. My heart did flipflops.
I went over everything they’d eaten that day. Birthday cake? Unlikely.
Mango? Maybe but unlikely. Leftover macaroni? How left over? I
hated the idea that maybe I could’ve prevented this. I hated that there was
nothing I could do at the moment besides hold their heads and give them
sips of water.
“Mama, I want this night to be over,” Jackson whispered, barely able
to speak.
I hated that I could not make time move faster. But there in the darkness
I loved being a mother. I loved the simple act of rubbing a back and pouring
a ginger ale, of being there, of being the one who at least tried to make it
better. It’s hard to explain, though if you’ve been there, maybe not.
So for Mother’s Day, there was no tea, only saltines. There was sleeping
followed by naps. “But we didn’t do anything for Mother’s Day,” Jackson said
on his way to bed. We did. He just won’t quite understand it until he gets a
family of his own. And, by the way, on Monday I found out it wasn’t food
poisoning at all.
______________
C. Jeanette Tyson is a freelance writer and mom to Jackson and Maddy.
Her award-winning advertising and branding work can be found at thethinkkitchen.com
Contact the Steeping Room at 512.977.8337.
