teatime

The essayist, as has already been established by the professionals, must set aside time in which to think, to ruminate, a time in which to remember events not for themselves but for the paths down which such memories will take him. I don’t presume to classify myself as an essayist, but I do try to attach meaning retrospectively to events in my life. In doing so, my mind is pulled back again and again to teatime with my mother.

I don’t know the habits of the British tea-drinker, but I imagine that for them teatime falls at an hour in mid-afternoon. For my mother and me, teatime meant midnight. She worked two jobs to support my older sister in college, and I kept such hours as conflicted terribly with her availability. At the age of eleven, I went to bed around ten and woke near six, missing my mother by some two hours either way. Needless to say, this damaged our communication, and we began calling mid-day to establish some conversation between us. I left her notes on the dry erase board, and she scribbled lines to me on napkins; but we went a month without seeing one another. Then one night I heard the muffled clanging of someone getting a drink in the kitchen. I snuck down the stairs to find my mother just home from work making a cup of tea to help herself relax. She and I smiled through our sleepiness, and I retrieved a second mug from the cupboard.

As time wore on, I didn’t have to hear her banging. I developed sensitivity to the sounds of her car in the driveway, so that I could meet her at the kitchen as she stumbled through the door. We heated the water in the microwave and sat at the table opposite one another as the bags steeped. For the next hour we talked together, she and I, like two grown-ups, equals. Sometimes we had information to share, news about the goings-on in our little household, but often times we waxed philosophical and thought introspectively. She had many more and deeper thoughts than I—or so I believed—especially about life, which I hadn’t yet experienced. She gave me wisdom for my preteen years. At Christmas, midway through her year of pulling double duty, we cemented our ritual. I bought her a teapot and matching cups, and she gave to me a silver charm for my bracelet: a teacup.

I grew during those nights. As she listened to my thoughts, I began to take them more seriously too. I challenged my ideas and sometimes found myself content with them. I found value in the innate wisdom of youth, and I tried to test my mother’s habit-ingrained doctrine. In retrospect, I worry about my mom and how our teatime robbed her of one more hour of precious sleep. I worried about her then, about her constant fatigue, and I tried to limit the burden I placed on her. I hope she never saw teatime as a burden. For me, the nightly tryst was not about the beverage: I don’t particularly like tea, and I had to nurse mine over the whole hour with two ice cubes melting in it until it suited my lukewarm standard. I loved that hour, because I had the opportunity to talk with my mother, to appreciate her and find that I in return held value for someone else.

She and I now live in separate states, but whenever I go home, she puts the tea kettle on at the end of the evening. I have never thought of refusing her, because it would not be the tea I’d reject. Teatime is our bonding time, and looking back I can find so much more meaning to it than I recognized at the time. It became a symbol of my close relationship with my mother and a sacrifice we both made to support it. In trying to affix meaning to this memory, I also find that it is my first instance in my life of trying to find significance in my life. If I ever become an essayist, I may say that I began my musings during teatime.