Begonia
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Feb 2, 2011
- Messages
- 3,708
I'm a person who is "stuck behind their eyes and lost btwn their ears", meaning introspective? I spend my days daydreaming and lost in thought, sometimes dissociative from past trauma although I've learned to manage that. I love stories, remembrances of things past, people we loved and lost. I'm not sure if there is an afterlife but I know love never dies and there is an afterlife in remembering and passing love and habits/ways of doing things on.
My family loves tea. I was probably given tea in my sippy cup as a baby. Tea bound us together as we sat and spent time rejoicing, relaxing, worrying, hanging out etc. I gave my son's tea as soon as I felt it was appropriate, which was pretty darn early, maybe 1 year old? I once got into a conflict at the toddler group with a health nurse over it, and I thought she might call social services on me! That was a fight I was willing to take on.
After school, I'd sit my kids at the table and have a snack and tea and decompress about their day. Green, white, black, yellow, herbal, we drink it all. Then the neighbor latchkey kids would show up and share our snack and tea. Imagine 4 little faces around the table eating cheese cubes, crackers, apple slices and drinking gen maicha (roasted rice green tea) from tiny porcelain cups. They would drink and listen to me tell them about the tea. Taiwanese high mountain with floral notes, milk oolong with it's creamy texture, the calming ability of hoji cha...my older son says his grown friends still reminisce about the tea and drink it to this day for its ability to comfort and soothe.
My Mum passed away a few years ago, but she loved tea. What she most loved was the ability of tea to bind us, to bring us together in love even when life may be going sideways. I may have had 27 cups of tea that day but if you dropped around and visited, and she made tea, if was the height of rudeness to refuse a cup. If was refusing hospitality, love, her Mothering? I'm not really sure...but when she looked away, I might dump the tea in a plant. Later as she got older, I always drank the tea.
I never knew my grandparents, they died when I was 2. Tea and kinship were pivotal in their lives too I'm told. I think about how much I missed not knowing them, having their love and wisdom (over tea) growing up, especially in my frightening household as a child, but I try to bring that atmosphere of love and acceptance to tea time in my house, as I imagine they would have.
My Father was an abusive man, and I'm hesitant to introduce his energy into my story for fear of contaminating it. Yet it wasn't all bad. I was an odd little duck of a kid who followed him around watching and wondering. He would explain things to me and show me how things worked, with his hands. He had lovely hands to my eye, capable and long fingered, and was very good with his hands. I think maybe having me in his presence calmed his rages a little at times. Not always. Now as I make yet another pot of tea I see those hands, they're mine now, passed on thru the mystery of genetics. Those same hands making tea in relative contentment and love, something he struggled with in life.
That's my story.
Next?
My family loves tea. I was probably given tea in my sippy cup as a baby. Tea bound us together as we sat and spent time rejoicing, relaxing, worrying, hanging out etc. I gave my son's tea as soon as I felt it was appropriate, which was pretty darn early, maybe 1 year old? I once got into a conflict at the toddler group with a health nurse over it, and I thought she might call social services on me! That was a fight I was willing to take on.
After school, I'd sit my kids at the table and have a snack and tea and decompress about their day. Green, white, black, yellow, herbal, we drink it all. Then the neighbor latchkey kids would show up and share our snack and tea. Imagine 4 little faces around the table eating cheese cubes, crackers, apple slices and drinking gen maicha (roasted rice green tea) from tiny porcelain cups. They would drink and listen to me tell them about the tea. Taiwanese high mountain with floral notes, milk oolong with it's creamy texture, the calming ability of hoji cha...my older son says his grown friends still reminisce about the tea and drink it to this day for its ability to comfort and soothe.
My Mum passed away a few years ago, but she loved tea. What she most loved was the ability of tea to bind us, to bring us together in love even when life may be going sideways. I may have had 27 cups of tea that day but if you dropped around and visited, and she made tea, if was the height of rudeness to refuse a cup. If was refusing hospitality, love, her Mothering? I'm not really sure...but when she looked away, I might dump the tea in a plant. Later as she got older, I always drank the tea.
I never knew my grandparents, they died when I was 2. Tea and kinship were pivotal in their lives too I'm told. I think about how much I missed not knowing them, having their love and wisdom (over tea) growing up, especially in my frightening household as a child, but I try to bring that atmosphere of love and acceptance to tea time in my house, as I imagine they would have.
My Father was an abusive man, and I'm hesitant to introduce his energy into my story for fear of contaminating it. Yet it wasn't all bad. I was an odd little duck of a kid who followed him around watching and wondering. He would explain things to me and show me how things worked, with his hands. He had lovely hands to my eye, capable and long fingered, and was very good with his hands. I think maybe having me in his presence calmed his rages a little at times. Not always. Now as I make yet another pot of tea I see those hands, they're mine now, passed on thru the mystery of genetics. Those same hands making tea in relative contentment and love, something he struggled with in life.
That's my story.
Next?