Honest Tea

Another perk of working from home, one that is infinitely better than the shortened commute, is afternoon tea. There were no petits-fours or clotted cream, but at around 3:30PM today, Father knocked on my door and asked if I wanted tea. "What kind?" "Just name it. I have everything." Then he came by again at 5PM to refill my cup of tieguanyin.

He's right about having every kind of tea. Father isn't particularly obsessive (the honor goes to the uncles), but we have a number of varieties of greens, blacks, and reds in bag and loose leaf form. Earl Grey and Pu-erh, fruits and barley and everything in between. It isn't just that we're from a culture where tea is quotidian. Plenty of people drink ghastly 'tea' in the UK and China. But I have a Father whose idea of a practical joke was teaching his four-year-old daughter the wrong name for a tea and who makes perfect Thai iced teas, down to the frothy top he makes with a martini shaker (but we just call it iced tea). There is no reverence about tea or ceremony in our family. It is about salty snacks, grown up chatter, and family.

This is why I flinch a little when I ask for tea and people offer me chamomile from a bag. I grew up on that delicate, brown butter hue, that sweet taste I know as oolong. Drinking it on a December afternoon, why, it tastes just like home.