A Cup of Tea and a Look Out of the Window

There is something about an alignment of the senses. An inexplicable moment that transports us to another realm. However civilised, sanitised and cynical we have become, there has been and always will be a space where magic happens. The high seas of our subconscious are a roiling storm of magic. We are too afraid of our place in this tiny fragment of universe to acknowledge it. Magic is the rock. The reality we have made for ourselves is the hard place. We feel the pressure as a constant. Sometimes it threatens to crush us. Sometimes we are afforded a wonderful moment of release and freedom. An enriched gift of life’s gravy that we may never make much sense of, but that we should be forever grateful for the taste thereof.

Tea is so underrated. The arbitrary, binary choice of tea or coffee does a disservice to the wonderful brew that is a tragic disgrace. Often, paradigms are presented to us and we are too polite or fearful to suggest an alternative. We could have water if that was what we really wanted. The presence of water is obvious in this mix, and yet most of us do not want to stand out. Even declining either beverage is a potential affront that we would rather decline.

We learn this passive acceptance throughout our childhood. It is the price we pay for the approval we are born seeking. The desire for belonging that a new born is imbued with is filled with pure love. Somewhere along the way we corrupt this into a travesty of that love. A bitter, transactional battle where we want to come out winning in order to feel we have any semblance of worth.

Worth.

We are born with worth, but we then forget ourselves and seek validation in any number of broken ways. Looking for that which is already there, and in abundance. Lessons learned and then discarded in ignorance. We burn away our knowledge of what counts, but ultimately we cannot remove anything of value. We engage in a pointless game of hide and seek. But meaning remains and it taunts us if we blithely choose ignorance over acceptance. We are such simple animals. Our awareness elevates us only a fraction over the beasts we feel a superiority over. 

Tea is a reminder of what counts. A potion that grounds us, and for a while at least, prevents us from being bullish idiots. I knew this. I have always known this. I had moments where I savoured my brew. Mostly I forgot though, and in my forgetting I was lost.

*

I was in a rush. Often, I was in a rush. Time conspired against me and this only added to my frustration at a world that expected far too much from me. Then there were those who dawdled and meandered in my path. Their purpose was to take precious moments from me and leave me in a dire predicament that they cared nothing of. To steal time is to take life, and so I resented their sanctimonious ignorance. There was so much of that about. A poisonous envy that was an obstacle to my life.

The day was unremarkable in its similarity to a host of other days. A shade of grey, with roads made greasy with moisture that came from clouds too lazy to rain. I pushed my car hard, but never too close to its limits. Or mine for that matter. I needed to get from A to B and there was no sense in wasting time. I had been in this state thousands of times before. Exerting my will over a piece of machinery in order to convey me to my destination. The familiarity of the cabin and the road ahead did not ease me into complacency, but I was complacent all the same. A sentient being in a soft meat suit, travelling at speed is a strange proposition at the best of times. More so if you were ever to ask that being what it thought of its perilous predicament. But mostly, they don’t think. Or if they do, their thoughts are monosyllabic. 

Safe.

At rest, the metal cage of a vehicle seems safe, and this is a sensible conclusion for the vast majority of situations. Once that vehicle is travelling at speed, the sturdy metal surfaces are no more than tin foil. The physical forces of the universe are immense and merciless. Even before chance and fate begin to roll their dice.

And there I was, in this game of chance that we call life. Doing something I’d done many times before and expecting a similar outcome. Just as long as nothing intervened. Occasionally aware that should the oncoming tipper truck swerve into my path I’d be a goner. Nowhere to go. No favourable options. Done. Dusted. Gone. I feared the mistakes of others and loathed them in equal measure, but it wasn’t anyone else that was my undoing. It was what it was, and when it happened there was an inevitability to it. I was a statistic. Tyres sometimes let go.

In this case, the rear tyre exploded as I cornered. In one moment, it was the foundation of my life. In the next it was a fickle balloon bursting for the surprise and delight of a party crowd. Time shuddered as this change occurred. Certainty gave way to chaos and my world view was thrown asunder. I was silent as I screamed. My brain span in my head and my body was both rigid and boneless. Gravity let go and then it remembered itself and came back with a vengeance. My eyes widened and I took in a tumbling panorama. I was exiting stage left, but this was not in the script. The road was a memory and as the car tumbled into greenery, there was this odd aggrievance at the turn of events that had befallen me. This wasn’t fair, and I was certainly going to be late now.

*

The light that streamed in through the windows held a different quality to the light I was used to of late, and yet I knew it all the same. The room was small and simply laid out. My attention was taken with the cup and saucer in front of me. Not a mug. Cup and saucer. Blue over a white background and a design reminiscent of the Far East. The liquid in the cup was a shade of tan that I’d not seen in an age, and even before the aroma rose to my nostrils, saddled on the back of the whisps of steam, I knew what would greet me. A precursor to the taste of mild tea enmeshed with sterilised milk. I envisaged the bottle, with its giraffe long neck and the metal top locking the liquid inside.

Only my grandparents bought that slightly vile liquid. And because I loved them completely, I drank it as I would any other drink that I liked. They were the ambassadors who sold me so much of life, and having given me so much, I could never refuse them.

I lifted the cup and sipped at the hot liquid. The promise of the aroma delivered exactly what I had anticipated. This was not my cup of tea. But it belonged all the same. I belonged. I sighed as I relaxed into my surroundings. Another sip followed. 

The pungent tea centred me and as I found my place in these surroundings I became aware of the obvious absence. I was here. My grandparents were not. The ground beneath me shifted and canted and I heard the scrape of a table leg as the room buckled along with my perspective.

This place did not make sense without my grandparents. Both of them. You did not get one without the other. I drank the tea once again. A vague memory of the future portrayed in tea leaves stroked the back of my neck. There was no future here. There was also no past. The presence of the windows made itself known and I refrained from looking towards them. There was something very wrong here, and I knew not to look out towards the dappled light. Beyond those apertures was a topsy turvy world of pain, not the small, well-kept garden I should have liked to have seen once more.

As I lifted the cup to my mouth yet another time, I smelt a pungent smell that reminded me of times spent with my granddad in the garage beyond the wall at my back. Engine oil, old leather and petrol. Still, I tipped the cup against my bottom lip and this time there was not the taste of tea, instead there was an astringent, coppery taste that made me gag and choke. 

Even as I choked, I felt a sense of terrible sadness. I mourned the loss of my grandparents all over again. Cheated of their presence, I missed them with a painful severity that hurt my chest and took the very breath from me. 

Then I was hanging upside down in my broken and twisted car. The pulse of blue lights becoming ever insistent in the periphery of my vision. As I came to my senses, I tasted blood in my mouth, but also the aftertaste of a cup of tea that I’d only ever drunk at my grandparents. 

As I heard the footsteps of my approaching salvation, I wept silently. My grandparents were not there when I sat in their kitchen. But they had made that brew for me. They’d made that cup of tea and left me to look out of the window of my reality. They were waiting in the next room. But it was not my time. They would meet me soon enough. Not yet. Not quite yet.