At any given time, in my childhood home, you could enter to find a half-full, delicate mug of tea, abandoned and gone cold on the kitchen counter. If there wasn't one there, you'd surely find it in the living room, on a coaster on the corner coffee table, or next to the old yellow landline phone with its curly-fry cord.
A quarter life later, you'll still find them. Forgotten, at least for the day. Only to be dumped and washed in the evenings.
The sound of the kettle has changed. From a hissing whistle on the stove, to a steaming bubbling sound with the loud "click" of an automatic shutoff. In fact, you could likely now do away with the sound all together, if you so wished.
The tea my mother drinks hasn't changed in 30 years. Square bags, quick to steep. Slow, if you're waiting. She still pours a dash of milk -- I know the color it should turn, exactly. The sound of a clanging spoon stirring briefly, the lift of the full tea bag...
The spoon presses the bag against the side of the mug, dribbles of the last of dark juices into the mix. The tea bag then sits on the spoon, squeezed to a pulp, spoon on the spoon rest. They will pile there throughout the day -- 3 or 4. Sometimes for a couple days. The saturated leaves will dry, a milky oval ring stain on the silver of the spoon.
It is slow and peaceful. From the fill of the kettle, to the time she sits with a mug cupped in her hands. The motions are automatic, spurred by what, we never know -- stress, boredom, the desire to relax, the seeking of familiarity, comfort, ritual. My grandparents did it too, religiously throughout the day.
As I watch my mother make her tea, in a mode of calm autopilot, her eyes staring off out the window as the water boils or tea steeps, I realize the weight in this. And that, while it looks different, I actually do share this ritual with her. While I drink coffee -- and to an extreme -- much of it is the same. The ritual, the simplicity.
My mind briefly flashes to an uncomfortable thought. Myself as an old lady, hopped up on mud-thick espresso coffee. No tea bags in the house. No lingering, sopping wet bags hanging over the sink. No tea on the granite counter with -- I swear -- only 2 sips out of it, only to be given the rest of the day off. And my children, surely, they'd not adopt a tea habit. That much would be gone. The elegance will have been traded for a more modern frenzy. The china passed down for generations -- those tiny tea cups my family has used and washed and steeped -- the ones Americans look at now as child-sized. (What is that, an espresso shot?) They will go unused, perhaps forever. In a glass cupboard gallery. And someday people will look over the fine china, its intricate art, its fragile and tiny pieces, and they will say, "Can you believe people used to drink tea out of these?" Surely now our standard mugs hold a minimum of 3 or 4 cups. It'll seem like Alice in Wonderland, like hilariously small furniture. I'd be a wiry old lady buzzing on a miles-long to-do list with impossibly giant mugs of coffee scattered about the house. The image is not so serene or calming as that of my mother or grandmother. But the process is there. The slow stillness of it, in a measure of adaptation.
No one will have to boil the water first. Nor steep the tea. Or grind the coffee beans. There will be no more flow of auto-piloted self-soothing. The moments you stare out a window, or gaze off into space. The calming ritual of your hand, bobbing the thread of a dangled tea bag in and out of steaming water.
I know they didn't always do it just to drink the tea. I knew that from a young age. Because half the time, it was forgotten. Sipped a moment, inhaled.
Times have changed. The moments have been given into automation, and most people are thankful for what they believe to be quickness, efficiency, time saved.
And so, as ever evident, we willingly let go of it. Of the process. We forget that it ever may have had purpose or value.
This has been my mother's brief therapy for her entire lifetime and through the raising of three ulcer-provoking children. I didn't know it then. Nor that that therapy has been a long family investment of gazes and thoughts and moments. Connections. The mindfulness was natural, it didn't have to be created or intentional as it so often does now.
I have changed it -- it has gone from tea to coffee. A little less old-English glamour. Slightly more harried, mascara under the eyes, more toddler-driven, more withdrawal. More addiction. A generational or socio-cultural change, a spin on the tradition or ritual. Made in half-asleep grumpy mornings, for the caffeine result. That much is okay. But I'll keep the process in it, that will live on. Maybe slow it down, let it take its time. Let it linger, and let myself linger, as if that is exactly what we were always supposed to do. And so it goes, behind the seeming chaos of those scattered, half-full mugs, there just may be a great family lesson in Zen. Honor some of the processes we are so quick to wish away, to overlook, to see as tedious or interfering. Appreciate that they may have life in and of themselves.