| LifeTakes |

Tea Anytime

By Esther Mendelsohn | February 2, 2017

MOTHER KNOWS BEST Nowadays I regularly find cups of tea I have no memory of making in random locations around my apartment. I don’t care; I stop sip feel revived wash out the cup and call my mother

O ne of the habits I picked up from my mother is drinking tea. A quintessential Brit my mother loves her tea: a simple Earl Grey left to brew for the perfect few minutes with just a dash of milk.

I remember sneaking a sip of the brown-gray drink as a child when my mother wasn’t watching and promptly spitting it out — it tasted and looked like the murky dishwashing water in the sink.

Children mature and so do their tastes. It was at some point toward the end of high school that I found my study sessions accompanied by a cup of tea. And not just any cup of tea. My childhood associations had spoiled Earl Grey for me. Now I preferred the strong Yorkshire blend the kind that’s so solid it seems to stick to your tongue if you leave the teabag in too long.

Sitting down to a cup of tea in the (invariably) rainy British climate was wonderful. Tea became my favorite way to relax: curling up on the couch with a magazine and a tea visiting friends and relatives and chatting over mugs of tea and turning in after a long day with a steaming tea on the night table.

As I started to become an amateur tea connoisseur I turned to the one who had initially inspired me. My mother still drank enough tea for England but I noticed something new. The house was always dotted with cups of half-finished tea the milk coagulating gently on the surface. I couldn’t understand this; didn’t my mother appreciate tea? She who knew all there is to know about this blessed beverage — how could she leave it neglected like that?

I always made tea and then sat down somewhere to properly appreciate it; why didn’t my mother accord tea the same respect?

“Oh darling it tastes fine cold” she’d protest when I asked her about it.

Even I was not a fanatic enough tea-lover to believe that. And warming it up in the microwave just brought back my childhood revulsion of Earl Grey. No tea had to be fresh.

“But I just don’t have the time!” my mother would say taking sips of her most recently made tea which was already cooling. “You’ll see” she continued “one day you’ll either drink it cold or you won’t drink it.”

I remember feeling skeptical at the time. Who drinks cold tea? How could someone not have time for tea?

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