When I get home from work, before I take off my coat and hang it on a dining room chair, before I let in the hangry yowling cat, before I announce my arrival with a "hey, I'm not a burglar"... I put the kettle on for tea.
Every evening I see the same thing: a clunky glass teapot drying on the counter. And my chest gets tight with the swelling feeling that we have agreed to call love. The teapot is there because of my husband. Every morning before he takes our daughter to school, he cleans out last night's tea leaves, washes the pot, and leaves it on the counter to dry.
Every morning.
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| "Yeah, I'm short and stout, I look good!" |
It's a small thing: a clean teapot. But it says everything there is to say about our relationship. My knows that this clunky cheap glass teapot is my favorite. He knows I usually prefer glass to ceramic because I monitor steeping time by color and that I like the depth of this particular basket and the way it allows for optimal water circulation to the leaves, he knows that I use this pot for the evening's iced selection because the thin glass walls allow for a faster cooling time. And he knows that for me a cup of tea isn't just a beverage.
My love for tea is both obsessive and promiscuous. I will drink $200/ounce imported white tea as easily and happily as a paper cup of English Breakfast from the break room. I am a purist (no cream, no sugar, sometimes a few drops of lemon to brighten a matcha or pu-erh or to "set" the antioxidants in blacks and greens) but I'm not a snob. I will try anything loose or bagged, iced or hot. I have my favorites and tend towards a clean, bitter palette but I still use bagged Red Rose as a base for most of my sun teas and drink potfuls piping hot when I'm sick. I cook with tea, use it in henna for a brighter red in my hair, mix it with cosmetic mud for masks, and apply it in compresses for sunburns and skin problems. I truly believe that nothing exists in this world that can not be improved with the addition of a nice cup of tea.
My husband shares my love of tea, but in a quieter, more measured way. For him, tea is delicious and healthy and has multiple uses but it's not a cure-all for him the way it is for me. Still, he accepts my obsessiveness, my fanaticism, even my occasional public evangelizing about the benefits of tea. He doesn't always buy what I'm selling, but he always listens. He accepts these things about me because he accepts me. Truly and completely, in that way we save for those we call family, he accepts me without condition or exception. With my various quirks and weirdnesses, my idiosyncrasies and difficulties, my obsessions and neuroses and wild tangents... he accepts me.
There's a moment in tea making when all activity stops and you must wait for the tea to steep. You have done what you can and now the water and the heat must work their magic. It's three to five minutes of stillness and in these moments I usually warm my hands on the thin glass walls. I'm forced to stop moving, stop planning, stop fidgeting with my phone. I'm allowed three to five minutes to simply think.
I imagine Stacey at the sink. It's still dark out, his hands are in the soapy water. Zola's running around looking for her missing everything. He's hollering locations and telling her to get her shoes on. He's rinsing the soap off, shaking off the excess water. She runs in, looking for her lunch. He nods toward the counter, the teapot warm in his hands, the towel wiping the outside. They're talking about homework and politics and ancient Sumerians and boys and zits and algebraic equations and she gets her backpack and their coats are on and they leave. And the teapot sits on the counter, clean and waiting, and the house is empty.
When the steeping is over, I come back to now and I pour the first cup of the evening. And I know I'm right: there isn't anything more powerful than this.
