My Tea

I am so in love with my favorite tea. It’s sort of a British/Russian type, which is to say it’s made in England and is popular in Russia. Well, sort of popular. Anytime I got to drink anything besides Lipton Yellow Label there, I got really excited (Lipton is the Mercedes of tea in Russia and also the Lada: the hallmark of class and yet also inescapably ubiquitous). I didn’t fall in love with this Earl Grey, though, until I was back from Russia and traipsing through the snow every week to Russian tea with my professors and fellow students at Oberlin. We’d chat, we’d share cookies and chocolates, we’d sip endless cups of tea. I always took mine with milk and sugar, but one night, for some reason, there wasn’t any sugar, and I was amazed to find that I liked this tea just as well without it, and even without milk. And thus the romance began. I’d drive to the Russian store in Cleveland to acquire it, and then I’d deal with all the vagaries of the dorm kitchen to make it for myself, picking loose leaves out of my all-purpose pot, since a kettle was an unattainable luxury at that time.

This tin, the one in the picture above, is special. I bought it for myself as a prize the day I passed my PhD oral exams at Berkeley. After three hours of conversation/grilling and one very nauseous moment in the middle, it was over. I passed! And I even did well. My friend gave me a ride home, and on the way we stopped at the Russian store in Oakland to pick up supplies for a Gogol party we were attending that night. Yes! A Gogol party! I remember so many pickles in so many plastic bags. I remember wandering through the aisles in my heels and shiny silver suit with white top-stitching, feeling like I was in some kind of alternate universe. I picked out this tea and clutched the tin awkwardly all the way home, just needing to hold onto something concrete. I took that elegant picture above the morning of the exams, with my two towers of books behind me.

That Gogol party was so much fun. And it wouldn’t have been a party without tea, of course. We were on, I think, the ninth course of the meal by then. I have cropped this picture to protect the innocent be-costumed ones who may like this evening to live in memory instead of on the internet. Oh, how I miss those Russian-infused evenings.

As I started putting my life back together after my exams, picking up and sorting the perilously tall stacks of papers, notebooks, and thick tomes from the library, there was tea. I drank it for the sheer pleasure of it, and not to stay awake, as I had for months on end. I remembered those nights in Oberlin–in a brick house built at the beginning of the Civil War, surrounded by warmth and laughter and people and a language I loved with my whole heart. I remembered our Gogol party in Berkeley, and all our undying inside jokes about symbolist poetry. I remember them now, hundreds of miles away, from a distance in years that cannot be traversed. And I drink tea.

Here in Pasadena, in my new life as a writer, I crave my tea every afternoon like clockwork. I put the kettle on, measure out the leaves into the strainer, give my cup a splash of milk, and wait for the pleasure to begin. This week, I reached the bottom of that tin I bought after my exams, almost five years ago. I went to an international market the next town over, where I’d seen my tea on the shelves before, not in bags, but loose, the way I like it. When I got there, I discovered that they no longer carry it. And I was filled with sadness. But happily, we live in the digital age, so I’ve got three tins arriving tomorrow, probably just as I scrape the last few leaves out of my box. I love the symmetry of it, and I am so happy that I won’t have to forgo my happy ritual even for a day. This tea is my road map, its routes twisting from the snowy gem of St. Petersburg to the cloudy corn fields of Ohio, over to the sweet ocean air of Northern California and down to  the pretty little desert we now call home. Wherever we may land in the future, this tea will land there with us, trailing a new turn in its itinerary behind us.

Bike Ride!

In addition to his many other talents, Eric is a biker–he has a classy road bike, and every few weeks or so he jets off into the hills on his clip-pedal shoes. He bought his road bike right after we started dating, close to five years ago. But before that he was a bike commuter. He rode in to campus every day for his six years of grad school, and he still has his trusty commuter bike, even though it’s not getting much exercise these days (the only downside to living a five minute walk from work!). Every now and again we take a bike ride together. He takes the heavy wire baskets off the commuter for me and lowers the seat, and off we go! We haven’t been out riding in ages, but this weekend was so lovely–75 degrees. I asked him this afternoon if he wanted to go for a walk, and he suggested a bike ride instead. And it was awesome.

Seeing Eric in his bike helmet and glasses reminds me so much of our dating years. He would ride over to my place for dinner after work, and he’d carry his bike up three flights of stairs. When he’d take his helmet off, he’d have these adorable waves in his hair. He used to bring over groceries to make dinner in his baskets, and sometimes big bouquets of flowers. I was always impatient for him to get his bike stuff settled so I could give him a giant hug, and those of you who know me well will be not at all surprised to hear that.

Today he took these pictures of me riding, and I didn’t even know it. He is the sweetest. He rode behind me so he could warn me of cars approaching. I am pretty much blown away every day by how kind and gentle and thoughtful he is, but today really took the cake. He went ahead of me to spec out hills and see if they’d be too steep for me. He reminded me to lower my gear when going uphill and bring it back down when going on flat land. He had water ready for me whenever I wanted it. He had all kinds of suggestions for making my ride more comfortable and more fun. And it’s at moments like these that I just tear up and think about what an incredible dad he is going to be. Whenever they come along, our kids are going to be the luckiest. The luckiest.

And that makes me smile so much my face hurts.

A Day for Lemons

Do you ever have one of those days when you’re going along just fine, and then it suddenly feels like you’ve been hit by a truck? Whoa, that happened to me today. I’ve been running around doing lots of cool stuff these last few days, with the slow creep of a sore throat upon me. This afternoon I was so tired that I worked from bed, which was, actually, surprisingly efficient! But I didn’t know I was sick until a little bit later. Like clockwork, every day at 4:30pm, this thought dances through my mind: “My kingdom for a cup of tea!” So today I made my tea and took a break as usual. And…it had no effect on me whatsoever. By the time Eric got home from work, I was ready to crawl into my pjs and call it a night.

As much fun as I’ve been having this week, I think my body is trying to tell me to slow my roll. And I’m going to listen to it. Tomorrow is going to be a day for sleeping in. A day for tea with so much lemon. A day for staying in bed as long it seems like the right thing to do. There’s a bunch of stuff I was going to do tomorrow, but, thankfully, none of it is so urgent that it can’t wait another day. I’m really happy (and grateful!) to be in this position, but I’m even happier for another reason.

I feel like the most important thing I learned last year (and it was a big year indeed) was to listen to my body and take care of myself. It’s way too easy to overcommit ourselves, way too easy to guilt ourselves into doing things that can wait. Some things, of course, are necessary, but I’m also learning to ask for help with those things. Truthfully, Eric makes that so easy for me. When he saw how bad I was feeling tonight, he bent over backwards to take care of me, and I gladly let him take care of all the dishes and the errands. (And I have to note tangentially that even all the butterflies and excitement of early dating don’t hold a candle to this kind of love–the love that runs to Walgreens for you and comes to check on you every twenty minutes or so and holds you while listening to all your fear and disappointment about slipping into a week-long flu extravaganza. Oh, that love, that rubber-meets-the-road love–it’s real love.)

Anyway, all I really wanted to say was, hey, three cheers for taking care of yourself! I hope you’re taking good care of yourself too. My lemons and I, we raise our glass of tea to you.

Almost

This is a very short and silly post to inform you that I almost bought these shoes in Ventura. They were shiny! And on super sale! But I thought more than ten steps in them might break my ankles. I stand by my decision, but…they’re so glittery! Would you have bought them?