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| Sunrise, Sunday, January 11, 2015 |
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| Sunrise, Sunday, January 11, 2015 |
When I was growing up in the rural
South, iced tea was a staple in our house, served at every meal except
breakfast. My father never drank it, but the rest of us did.
And it wasn’t only a summertime
drink. We drank it year-round.
Most of relatives did the same.
If you wanted a hot drink, you
were served coffee. I don’t remember ever drinking hot tea.
I remember many a Sunday afternoon
at my maternal grandmother’s house, my aunts gathered around the kitchen table
drinking coffee and gossiping.
And when some of my uncles visited
our house, the kitchen would soon be full of the aroma of percolating coffee
and cigarette smoke.
As a child, I liked the look of
adults leisurely drinking their coffee, cup after cup. I wanted to be grown up,
too. My mother would put half coffee and half milk in a cup for me, and I’d sip
it as if I, too, was part of the kitchen conversations.
I didn’t get much coffee though.
My mother said it would make me ugly. I think it was a variation of the warning
that for young people drinking coffee, it would “stunt your growth.”
I didn’t drink much coffee, and
never hot tea, until I was 22 and started graduate school. I had to find a way
to stay up late or all night to study, and I found coffee and hot tea gave me the
caffeine I needed.
For hot tea, I would buy the Lipton
tea used for iced tea. I had no idea of the different kinds of tea available.
Then I became friends with D, a woman
from Calcutta, who introduced me to Indian tea. She would bring a supply back
with her when she visited India.
With D, I learned that there were
other kinds of tea besides Lipton iced tea bags. And I learned about the companionship
that can go along with sharing a cup of tea with someone, something that I
never quite got with coffee.
Fast forward many years, and Larry
gave me a Keurig one Christmas. We started experimenting with different
coffees, trying to find one that wasn’t too strong, too weak, too bitter, too
anything.
I usually drink my coffee—and tea—without
any addition of cream, sugar, or honey. But if a new kind of coffee we tried
was especially bitter, I’d add some creamer.
One cup was usually all I could
drink. It bothered my stomach. And frankly, the coffee smelled better than it
tasted.
Larry had never liked coffee, but
he drank cup after cup over the years, trying to like it.
“Why do you drink it if you don’t
like it?” I’d ask.
“Because I’m supposed to like it,”
he said. “I’m getting older, and don’t old people drink coffee?”
I couldn’t shake his shaky logic.
I knew that he thought he needed to like coffee to fit in with the coffee
drinkers of the world.
I finally decided to call it quits
on trying to like coffee. Oh, I enjoy an occasional cup. But hot tea is more
palatable for me and Larry. Why not drink what we enjoy more?
And I love the ritual of sitting
by myself with a hot cup of tea, sipping and thinking and being ….. quiet.
I decided that I would learn more
about tea this year. I drink more of a variety nowadays, but I don’t know the
differences in leaves, in how it’s made, about all the ways that you can make a
better cup of tea.
I have a pretty teapot, but the
Keurig is convenient. I’ll be using it and the teapot and even just boiling
water poured into a cup. I’m excited about what I’ll learn.
***When I told you my word for
2015 is “Quiet” I didn’t mean to be quite so quiet in the blogging world. I’m
sorry for my absence last week. Life happened: Larry has been sick with a bad
cold/sinus infection, I’ve been busy with work, etc. I hope to be around to
visit you soon.***
What about you? Do you like
drinking hot tea? What’s your favorite kind? How do you make it?
