The Joy of Tea

Fairly regularly I find myself using the search function of my e-mail program to read over some of the hundreds of e-mails K.B. and I exchanged. This makes me feel as if her voice is still with me, and I do miss both her writing voice and her actual voice, very much. It reminds me, too, of the delight we took in sharing silly, bizarre, intriguing, or baffling tales of human behaviour, including our own. And then there are the many, many e-mails in which either she or I asked, “Are you free for tea soon?”

For most of my adult life I had been an inveterate coffee drinker. I looked down at tea drinkers for their choice of beverage, which I saw as a thin, insubstantial sort of drink. It was as if they couldn’t handle a true caffeine kick and so settled for something less demanding.

My coffee snobbery suffered a body blow around the same time that K.B. and I started becoming close friends. I’d like to think that this was because her influence was leading me to become more enlightened, but it had more to do with the fact that I was starting to have heart palpitations. Various tests showed that nothing was wrong. The cardiologist asked me if I drank coffee, which I admitted I did (although only ever one or two cups a day!). He suggested that I might be getting more sensitive to the caffeine in coffee, something that happens to some people as they age. Another one of the joys of getting older!

So I started having a half-decaf/half-regular cup of coffee in the morning. That still bothered me, so I switched to all-decaf (the horror! I had previously ranked decaf drinkers even lower than tea-drinkers). Finally it became apparent that coffee drinking could only ever be an occasional part of my life, and I grieved the loss of what I had thought had been a core part of my identity. I’m not keen on labels, but coffee-drinker had been one I’d proudly worn.

Oddly, however, the caffeine in green, black, and white tea did not seem to bother me. It seemed fortuitous that just as I was starting my tentative steps into tea appreciation that K.B. and I started spending more time together. K.B. was an aficionado of tea: she had an impressive collection of teapots (eight in her office alone), and she was particularly interested in single-estate teas. One time when I was back in St. John’s and in a new tea store there I texted her to see if there was anything she wanted, but since they didn’t have any single-estate teas, the answer was no. She was particularly fond of a tea from an estate called Needwood, which her teenage daughter thought was infinitely hilarious.

In 2009, a married couple—who were actually the parents of one of K.B.’s daughter’s schoolmates—opened up a combination tea shop and imported British foods store. As soon as K.B. found out about this place, it became a regular stop for us on our Saturday outings. Not only did the tea shop serve tea in proper china teacups and teapots with silver strainers, but they made all their own baked goods, too. While I tried a different dessert each time, K.B. was always faithful to their teacake, which she deemed perfect.

So this time a year ago, when K.B.’s future sister-in-law, J., and I were hosting her wedding shower, it made sense that the theme would be afternoon tea. K.B.’s female friends and soon-to-be in-laws gathered at my house where we sipped tea from my collection of old teacups and nibbled dainty treats. The place was decorated with teacups filled with rose buds, arranged by J.

The last time K.B. and I saw each other on a social occasion (as opposed to the last time I saw her, when she dropped off the jar of lemon curd before Christmas) was on November 30^th, 2013. She had suggested that I and another friend and her mother-in-law and sister-in-law go to the special Christmas tea at the tea shop.

I knew it would be an insanely busy day for me, as there was a work-related event just before we were to meet. As I was madly peeling down the streets of our fair city, trying to get from one end of town to the other in an expeditious manner so as not to keep everyone waiting, I thought for a moment, “This is too much! I should have said I wouldn’t be able to meet them!”

But once I was there, it was, of course, just a delightful occasion. K.B. had urged us to wear hats, but only she was wearing one. At one point her sister-in-law took a photo of K.B. and I with our friend Y. That is the last photo of us together, and I treasure it. It makes sense that it would have been taken in a place we visited so often, engaged in the ritual of tea drinking which had not been part of my life before K.B. had entered it.

I have not been back to the tea shop since she died. It’s one of those things which still feels too hard. But last Saturday I had three friends over who had been here for K.B.’s shower a year ago, and together we drank tea and ate dainties in her honour.