Vanessence: Tea for Twosday

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Tea for Twosday

I hated coffee until I was 18 years old. When I was little, my mother drank it with cream only, and when I snuck a sip once, I nearly gagged.

At 18, a friend invited me to a restaurant for lunch, and once we were there, encouraged me to get a cup of coffee. Figuring I was a grown-up now (yeah, I was 18, stop laughing!) I should drink the grown-up drink of coffee. I poured a little cream in, and gagged again, just like I was a kid. “Uh, why don’t you put a little sugar in it,” my friend suggested. I did. Love was born. Coffee with cream and sugar is a gift. And, since I stopped using sugar in it, coffee with cream and sweetener is also a gift. Smile

Tea, meh. I drank it sometimes, if I had a cold or something, with a touch of honey, when I could have honey. But, what a pain to prepare! Usually not worth the effort for just one cup.

Then one day, my beloved was feeling a little bit spendy. He’d bought himself some stuff and as is his wont, encouraged me to buy myself something of equal value. For reasons I cannot even begin to understand, I knew I had to have a teapot and teacup. A real teacup with a saucer. My husband actually raised an eyebrow when he learned that’s what I’d picked out for myself. “You don’t even drink tea,” he said, “why would you buy something like that?”

“I don’t know. I only know it’s time for me to start drinking tea, and to do that, I need a teapot and teacup. And a tea kettle. That whistles.”

So, this is what I got. Of course it had to be pink! It will hold about 6 teacups worth of tea when I’m drinking it, about 2½-3 cups if Dane is drinking it. Because he didn’t get a teacup, probably would never ever get a teacup, and so drinks his tea in a big coffee mug. MY teacup is pretty. It has pink and yellow on it, of course!, and flowers and a butterfly, of course!, and I love it. Open-mouthed smile It has become a fairly regular ritual now in the evenings, for us to brew up a pot of tea. I have about half a dozen different kinds – I think Lady Grey is my favorite, and there are a whole bunch I want to try. I can’t explain exactly what it is, but there is a different feeling from drinking coffee than there is in drinking tea. It puts me in a different frame of mind somehow. Don’t get me wrong, I still love coffee and don’t start my day without it – sometimes end it, too. I’ll probably die with a cup of coffee on my desk. Or forgotten in the microwave, again.

But tea is now included in the beverage family. It’s silly, I know. It makes me happy, though, to see my little teacup on the counter, waiting for me. Smile

Are you a tea or coffee drinker? How do you take it?