Tea Time

 “Virginia, it’s almost time for it to start!” Carol’s father called from the living room.

Carol’s mother had been in the kitchen since exactly 2:53. It was the same routine every weekday. She’d filled the white tea kettle with fresh water from the tap and set it to boil. She  opened the cupboard and reached for a small blue plate, one blue mug, and one white mug.  Then she took a cellophane package of cookies from the wooden bread box, drew one out and dropped it on the blue plate. The motion was fluid, executed swiftly from years of practice, and the sound of the crisp cookie hitting the ceramic made the sound that only cookies can make.

The cookie was shaped like a windmill, fragrant with an odd spice mixture of cinnamon and what was it… ginger? Carol didn’t care for cinnamon, or ginger. But her dad loved them. He had one every day. On that same blue plate. Carol sighed.   She bet that each cookie probably had the same exact amount of slivered almonds in them.

By this time, her mother had already procured one cinnamon spice tea bag from the tea box and dipped it in the blue mug of boiling water she’d just poured. After she put the cookies away and straightened up the countertop appliances, she pulled the tea bag string out of the steaming blue mug and dunked it into the white mug. Carol found that entirely too frugal but supposed that after being married for twenty-seven years, they’d shared just about everything else in life. Why not share a tea bag, too?

The remote control had clicked and settled on General Hospital. The blue ensemble was carried in first and placed on the side table next to her dad’s recliner. Then Virginia returned to the kitchen for her own. Like the three grown children whose needs had always been placed before her own, Carol’s mother also placed her husband’s needs first.

Carol simply didn’t understand the sheer boredom of it all, the predictability, the eternal lack of deviance. The steady boil, the steady pour- not a drop of hot water lost. The swift exit and return to the kitchen for the white mug, tea bag still feebly steeping. At  precisely 3:59, her father returned the empty mugs and plate, without a single crunchy crumb remaining, to the sink.

Her mom had asked Carol if she ever wanted to join them. She even bought the Soft Batch chocolate chip cookies in the red plastic package that Carol liked. But Carol chose to click her Depeche Mode cassette tape into her Sony Walkman knock -off and go jogging.

Carol had just finished her junior year at the university and had moved back home to save some money and work two part-time jobs. Her brother and sister had already begun their careers, graduating barely one year apart.  It was just Carol, her mom, dad and one lazy orange cat in the house. 

 The late 1980s was a difficult time to be stuck in a small town in Michigan. College life had been exciting and full of dancing at clubs, tailgating, football games, parties at the lake and even outdoor volleyball in the snow. But now she had to slow down to the pace of her folks sipping tea and watching a soap opera unfold with all its over-acted accusations and  dramatic scandals.

It’s not that she didn’t love her parents, she simply didn’t understand how they could perform the same act, the same scene day after day, season after season. When she was home in the summer, some days reached ninety degrees. Who drinks steaming hot tea when it’s ninety degrees outside? Surely her parents thought there had to be more exotic and interesting corners of the world than the same living room in a small town in Michigan?

***Carol glanced at the calendar. June 2004. Another teaching year completed, and she was exhausted. How had twenty years filled with fourth and fifth graders passed so quickly? It was finally time to sleep in, slow down, and spend time with her husband and three-year-old daughter. While they were playing outside in the sprinkler, she reached into  the cupboard and took out two plates, a small brown ceramic plate and Anne’s favorite, a plastic plate with Dora the Explorer smiling on it. She took six Fudge Stripe cookies from the cookie jar and dropped four of them on the brown plate, and two on the Dora plate. She poured a glass of milk for Anne in the matching Dora sippy cup and a glass of iced tea for her husband.

Carol reached for her favorite mug- the one Anne had chosen for her birthday the previous year. It had pumpkins of various sizes and colors tumbling all over each other. Although Houston temperatures were sure to be over ninety degrees and the Halloween-themed mug hardly was in season, she poured herself a steaming hot cup of coffee, put the cookies back in the cupboard, sighed and sat down. She was looking forward to a summer off and time spent in her corner of the world rather than a classroom.

***Carol looked up at the screen. The flight to Detroit was on time. She’d been home to Michigan several times over nearly thirty years but wished it had been more frequently.  Her husband brought her green tea from Starbucks while Anne sat beside her, lost in thought, quiet, her cell phone tucked away in her backpack. 

The flight landed on time, the rental car was secured, the drive uneventful.  Her brother and his family had arrived first followed by Carol’s sister and her husband. When they saw the  car pull in the driveway, her sister ran out without a coat on, although  it was twelve degrees. 

The number of friends and family that attended the funeral was astonishing. Virginia had been a friend to all, and made every single acquaintance feel they were the most important person on the planet. Her smile and laughter, her listening ear and caring heart, her willingness to give had surely earned her golden wings. Her Christmas dinners, the Halloween costumes she’d handmade, the snickerdoodle cookies that were her specialty,  the time that she had to get the car towed out of a snow bank because she was adamant on returning the VHS tape to Blockbuster or it would be overdue…

That afternoon, the family had gathered in the living room, not really watching TV, not really talking. Their father, heartbroken, sat in his recliner and remained silent. All Carol could do was get up, go to the stove and put water in the kettle. She took out a blue plate and a blue mug. She reached for the package of windmill cookies and set several out on a large  plate. And she reached for a cinnamon spice tea bag.  She glanced at the clock on the wall.  It was exactly 2:53.