Tea

For Mom's birthday:

I confess: I hate tea. At least of the tea bag variety, and especially iced tea. How does one drink something that smells that bad? Coffee was my favorite. Mom bought the local brand, Autocrat, with the little bird on the tin and the legend "A swallow will tell you..." and at breakfast the rich, full scent was as good as reveille. Even today I sniff the coffee aisles of the supermarket with delight.

On cold winter nights when the wind would have whistled through the north-facing front door if we did not have it blocked up for the season, though, Mom loved tea. And I loved the ritual.

I was usually in bed, at the center of a wooly cocoon that consisted of a sheet, two blankets, and a light summerweight blanket doubled up on top of me, pillowed on two feather pillows and clad in flannel "feetie" pajamas with socks on underneath. In radiator versus cold winter wind, the latter won most of the time. My bedroom was right off the kitchen and by lying on my left side I could look directly at the gas stove. Back in those days I walked in my sleep, had nightmares, and woke up screaming. If I was in the dark I would awaken not knowing where I was, so in my bedroom on the dresser there was a little plaster nightlight base, putty-color and oval shaped and strewn with tiny seashells. At one end a large seashell half stood on end, and inside in the grotto the shell made was a small statue of the Virgin Mary. The nightlight flooded her with light and was a warm beacon in the dark. There was also a less prosaic, grocery-story type of nightlight in the kitchen. Between them I slept comforted.

On chilly nights Mom would pad out from the living room, taking care not to wake me although I usually was still awake anyway. She'd be bundled in a quilted bathrobe and slippers over her pajamas, with a pink hairnet on, and she would go to the cupboard where the pots and pans were kept and extract the littlest saucepan, wider than it was tall and bright aluminum silver, so small only a couple cups of water would fill it. Mom saw no need to keep a teakettle; it was easier just to boil water in the saucepan and then just pour it over the teabag slumped inside the jade green coffee mug.

From the bed with drowsy eyes, I would see Mom's silhouette bowed over the stove, the bit of steam lit by the nightlight bulb, and the flickering blue gas flame, which was like a small hearth burning just for me, and quiet and safe, I fell asleep.