Mad Hats and Teapots

Sometimes the theme of the day just presents itself. This morning J. walked downstairs wearing her Alice in Wonderland long-sleeved t-shirt from our last trip to Disney, holding the Alice in Wonderland collection of stories I gave her almost exactly a year ago (which she had just rediscovered while cleaning her room), and sat down at the dining room table with her Alice in Wonderland tea cup to drink (coffee) and read before school. As we chatted, she showed me some of the vaguely creepy illustrations in the book, and I opened Facebook to see the prompt from this day last year, which was a quote from the Mad Hatter.

Well, duh. Today I’m going to be thinking about tea. But also Disney. Which reminded me that I need to arrange her flights to visit a friend in Florida this summer. But I’ll do that later. Now, for the tea.

It just happens that a couple weeks ago, we visited a tea house for an afternoon lunch/brunch. The Mulberry House in Westfield, a cute little place that, like so many of the businesses and doctor’s offices in the area, used to be an actual house. It still feels like you’re eating in someone’s front room, shoulder to shoulder with strangers who are, like you, pretending to be civilized and pick at their very small plates of food.

Upstairs where the bedrooms must have been, they host bridal showers, baby showers and other events that are primarily attended by women. Believe it or not, those events can get rowdy. Who would have thought that miniature cucumber sandwiches and scones would bring out the crazy? More likely it’s the BYO wine, which I wished I had thought to bring.

Downstairs in the main dining room, we choose our tea for the meal (passionfruit rose) and our food. None of the traditional teeny tea food for us. We’re ordering like we’re at the diner—an omelette and salad for me,  an omelette, hash browns and a plate of bacon for her. At least the pink teapot makes us feel somewhat dainty.

It’s part 1 of a belated Mother’s Day “girls’ outing”, which ends with an evening trip to a nearby spa. The teen facial for her (75 minutes of scrubbing, masking, and extractions, ouch!) and a scalp/neck/shoulders/upper back massage for me. It was the only thing on the menu that I could handle. I won’t get any facial treatments because my skin is so sensitive and it’s embarrassing to leave the place with a face that resembles a ripe tomato. And I can’t book a massage because the thought of getting completely naked in front of a stranger makes me break out in hives. So, a neck massage it was.

We have a history of mother/daughter tea time. When she was little, like most little girls, she had several tea sets and I we would have mock tea dates. About that time, it became popular for girls to have actual tea parties for their birthdays, so we attended a few of those. We had our first very fancy tea at the American Girl store/restaurant in New York. At some point, going to tea became our mother/daughter bonding activity.

To be honest, looking back on the day, I’m not sure that we really enjoyed the tea, or the meal, or the spa, as much as we would have enjoyed anything else. But we had a wonderful day nonetheless.

There’s something about the ceremony of drinking tea in a place that’s dedicated only to the appreciation of tea that makes it a special experience. Like wandering around a museum, or sweating in identical short robes in the spa’s completely silent sauna, it forces you to focus on the thing that you are doing together at that very moment.  Nothing else matters, and for that brief time, only the two of you exist.

So although I don’t especially love tea, we have an entire shelf full of exotic and store-bought tea at home. Here’s the shelf.

Choosing the tea, boiling the water, steeping the leaves, pouring the tea into our special mugs, drinking it together . . . It’s not really about the tea, it’s about quiet time spent together enjoying one, singular, solitary (yet bonding) thing.

Time for tea!

Thoughts on becoming a goat

via Daily Prompt: Precipice

I’ve always approached challenges as if they are “succeed” or “fail”–no middle ground, no grey area, no shades of interpretation or even phases of development. There’s always “where I am now”, and “where I want to be”. And the difference between the two is a steep precipice that I can only overcome by flying.

The problem is, people can’t fly. For some reason I’ve have to learn this over and over, envisioning the end result and hurling myself off the cliff in the hopes that I’ll figure out how to become airborne. Usually I get somewhere close to where I was headed, but banged up, bruised and generally disillusioned about the whole affair.

Over the last few months I’ve had no choice but to learn how to be patient, and see each small daily (or weekly) development as slow, steady progress toward a goal that will be worth it. Each step creates a new foothold in a rock face that isn’t sheer, but only steep, and doesn’t really go in any direction. It doesn’t go up, it doesn’t go down, it just goes . . . there.

And here’s the thing I’ve had so much trouble resolving in my head: There is no end point. You’re never going to be finished. And there’s really nothing wrong with that. I mean, who wants to be finished? What do you do then? Alright, I’m done! Where’s my prize?

I’m ok with being a constant work in progress, shuffling across unsteady ground, looking for the next solid place to rest and take stock. I don’t have a carefully charted plan (gasp). Each step forward–or sometimes back–I’m learning new things and remaining open to anything else that might come along. Maybe that “something else” will lead me off the path I thought I was on, and that’s fine too.

As long as I keep navigating a trail that I’ve chosen, it will always lead me somewhere I would like to be.