On Tea: A more personal note

When I was writing about all the different teas I have tucked away in my cupboard, I realised that part of the reason I particularly savour all the different flavours is that each one was introduced to me by a different person, and when I drink it, I am reminded of them.  Tea is the stuff of long conversations with friends around the kitchen table.  It is the stuff of family visits accompanied by milk tart or Assorted Bakers biscuits.  It is served at important functions, like graduation teas or weddings, or even funerals.  You could drink it on your work or tea break while you sit and have a gossip, or, like me in my solitary working state, I enjoy it as it helps the words come out better.

In this way, knowing how someone takes their tea can sometimes be a measure of how well you know them, because if they have been invited into your home, there is a strong chance you will have made tea for them frequently.  Everyone has their own tea-drinking quirks. I drink all my tea black (after my mother) with the tea bag still in (at this, my mother thinks I am crazy) but Zwe and his sister take theirs with milk, sugar and not only the teabag still in, but the spoon as well.  My father has complicated routine that involved warming up the cup with some plain hot water first, and then using white sugar for tea and brown sugar for coffee (and never the twain shall meet).  I know I haven't speant much time with my school friends for a while because I have forgotten how they take their tea when I used to know.  This makes me a little sad.

I never used to be much of a tea drinker.  The only time I drank tea growing up was when I stayed with my grandmother. The taste of milky, sweet Earl Grey will forever remind me of her neat little cottage in Waterfall Retirement Village.  She no longer baked but always made sure there was something sweet for her first granddaughters to eat.

At school, I think the only tea I really took notice of was Paddock tea, mainly because my friend Carmen's father was a tea farmer and as a result, Paddock tea was held in wide esteem in my humble part of the world.  Sadly, no one in Paddock makes tea anymore, so if you come across any lingering boxes of the stuff, you should snap it up quickly.

Plain rooibos tea was my procrastination of choice when I was in residence at Rhodes University.  Breakfast or lunch or supper would be finished, but if you were still nursing a mug of rooibos from the dining hall stash, then you didn't have to go back to your room and get back to work.  Living in the annexe, I would drink the decadent Woolworths Green Tea (everything from Woolworths Food seems decadent if you live in a town without one.  Oh yes, Johannesburg readers, they do exist) one of my housemates would bring from Johannesburg, or I would make my own hot drink with honey and lemon.  Grahamstown is also bitterly cold in winter, and tea was always a sustaining cordial to get you through the winter (well, that and copious amounts of alcohol.  You would be amazed what you can get away with wearing out in winter when some alcohol has warmed you up first).

Twinings tea is all because of my mother and our English holiday at the end of 2009.  We shopped until my aunt was horrified that we had come all the way to London to shop (the horror! to be fair to us, I did arrive two days before Christmas and I hadn't done any of my Christmas shopping...)  England in winter is just so cold and dark that a flavoured tea can be the last thing between you and full-blown madness.

It is from 2010 onwards that my tea obsession has really taken a solid form.  Zwe's sister Zama introduced me to Buchu tea (on one of our annual Summer get-fit drives) and her friend Thabi stayed at the flat one night and brought her own tea (something every sensible tea lover should do).  That was when I discovered the marvel that is instant, extra-strong Honey and Ginger Tea.  I have sustained myself on that tea when it is late and everyone else is still partying and my alcohol jersey has worn off.

The Chai Tea is something that brings all sorts of people together.  Zwe's mother likes it, as does my sister who is my supplier of the delicious stuff.  (In some ways, she is my drug dealer, as sugar is my drug of choice any day)  She worked in a wonderful little health shop called "The Mustard Seed" in Grahamstown that is the only place I have ever found it that sells it.  She and I often let each other know when we are drinking it and it is definitely something us sisters share.  I also introduced it to my old friend Christy (we've been friends a whole decade now, whoopee!) the last time we had one of those delicious catch-ups, and she really enjoyed it too.

Some catch-ups in my world occur not in my home, but in the English Department.  My one-woman-wonder friend Eva who is currently completing her Phd (along with working three or four other jobs) invited me for tea in the Phd room when I was too broke to go out for some, and we sat and sipped our way through two cups of Laager Green Rooibos, Citrus and Ginger tea.  Ah bliss.

The Five Roses Orange and Lemon teas was also introduced to me by friends, Malcolm and his wife Jess when Gwynlyn (another school friend) and I were staying at their newly-wed home in Secunda.  It was a revitalising visit for both of us, we speant a lot of time sitting at their table or in their living room just chatting about everything under the sun (and by everything I mean everything, as these three are comprised of two engineers and a geologist) and down time with distant friends is better than a weekend at a spa.

My next tea adventure (I think) will be into leaf tea.  I have a teapot and a strainer, and the redoubtable Mrs. Spiller gave me leaf tea for Christmas in two gorgeous boxes: Assam tea and Caramel Rooibos.  Perhaps, like my adopted grandmother, Granny Pam, I will learn to tell fortunes in the tea leaves...

sixteen days...

Spending a large amount of time in my teenage room: I have come across the books I used to read and re-read as a teenager. Harry Potter is obviously great - even more fun because there are so many other fanatics out there to obsess with about what is going to happen, and who Harry's girlfriends are and who will die in the end (at this point we would always look unbearably grave and shudder at the pain of one Weasely twin dying and the other being saved, or perhaps that the ultimate terror would occur and Harry himself would die with Voldemort in a horrible twist). It makes me sad to think I know what happens now. A whole part of the fun is not knowing and waiting in ecstatic agony. I am not even over-exaggerating. It was ecstatic. I mean I read the new book from cover to cover in two nights whilst pretending to study for my trials and then read the last one with my wife, Natasja in rehearsals for our opera.

But the books I re-read recently (with whom I have never had obsessive companions, except my beloved Granny Pam) were the books by Louisa May Alcott and L.M. Montgomery, famous for writing "Little Women" and "Anne of Green Gables" respectively. I bought most of them at Adams and Griggs in Musgrave Centre in Durban. They were all selling off at R20 a book (except a precious expensive few that found their way into my Christmas stocking) and I bought them up quickly and read them greedily. I read them for so many hours that I used to dream I was still reading them, seeing the print and reading new adventures of the characters when I was asleep.

I was trying not to re-read books that I wasn't studying for a long time as there simply is so much to read I will never be able to get through them all. Recently, however, I think nostalgia and curiosity got the better of me and I re-read some.

I love L.M. Montgomery because her descriptions are idyllic and home-y and full of rich and mysterious descriptions of the natural world:
"Emily loved every flower and shadow and sound in it, every beautiful old tree in and around it, especially her own intimate beloved trees - a cluster of wild cherries in the Southwest corner, Three Princesses of Lombardy, a certain maiden-like wild plum on the brook path...Emily was always glad she lived where there were so many trees - old ancestral trees, planted and tended by hands long dead, bound up with everything of joy and sorrow that visited the lives in their shadows" (4).

All her characters nurture their aspirations and have a fascinating and by turns conservative and eccentric neighbourhood in which they grow up. They are also all Presbyterians and know elderly matriarchs who think all other denominations are less righteous than theirs. Finally, they marry their childhood sweethearts (sometimes after some strife) and live happily ever after.

Louisa May Alcott lived about fifty years earlier, and wrote the "Little Women" quartet ("Little Women", "Good Wives", "Little Men" and "Jo's Boys") and then "An Old-Fashioned Girl" (this book, as a reader of many books, particularly the classics and my penchant for long skirts, antiques, old-fashioned morals and all sorts of things "Old-fashioned" was my favourite one) and then "Eight Cousins" and "A Rose in Bloom" (the one follows on from the other). The latter three books all feature strong women who wish to be financially independent women (in the 1800s!), live good lives uplifting their fellow human beings: particularly other women, whether they are orphans or old ladies too poor to live anywhere clean and decent. She advocates equal rights for all: women, servants, African Americans: all marginalised people should have their fair chance.

Most of her heroines also marry their childhood sweethearts, or wise men for whom they have great respect. Jo March marries a German doctor, and together they run a most amazing school where children are taught all manner of things to help them grow up to be good, well-rounded citizens.

Somehow, in all these wholesome lessons, nutritious stories and happy memories I've read for years, I presumed these lady authors had lived happy and fulfilling lives, rather like those that self-help gurus and modern, quaffed chick-lit authors pretend to lead. Reading the books again with my adult eyes, I felt I had fallen short of my childhood ideals. I had wanted to live these lives, making a difference to those around me and reflecting so that I could make my life neat around the edges.

I decided to do some research on my heroines for inspiration: see what they did to become such wonderful artists. I discovered Louisa May Alcott never married. She said she never met any man that she could fall completely in love with, although she admitted she loved many women deeply. Scholars disagree about whether this means she was a lesbian or not. Her childhood was spent moving frequently with her three sisters, mother and philosopher father who - at some point - decided he was a radical socialist and so refused to accept money for any work he did. His friends (among them Thoreau and Emerson) used to leave banknotes tucked away in the furniture for people to find, and his daughters all had to find any work they could to keep the family afloat, including domestic work (Louisa was abused at one of these positions), teaching and laundry.

She served in a hospital during the Civil War (she was an abolitionist) and contracted Typhus, for which she was given mercury as a "cure". She died at age 55 as a result. She still, however, outlived two of her sisters (one of them died of Scarlett fever. Remember Beth of "Little Women"?), her mother and her father (she died just two days after him). She also made sure her family had enough money and a house for the future by writing many novels (the same novels I loved) that she referred to as "moral pap for the young".

L.M. Montgomery married late in life after turning down many marriage proposals in her youth and after spending years looking after her ailing grandmother. From the comments I have read, she actually married because she realised being a single woman in Canada was an unpleasant and alienating life to lead. She married a depressive Presbyterian minister and had three sons, one of whom was stillborn. She also died at a relatively young age (after living for many years with bouts of depression) and there is uncertainty whether she killed herself or whether she had an accidentally potent drug cocktail for her ailments.

As I get older I realise that fairy tales are just that. Life is a messy, circular, woefully difficult business, not a "happy" ending. These women created worlds that I admired but they themselves could never live in them. The nature of stories is that no one can live in them, and yet everyone does. We make our lives by telling ourselves stories about what's happening in and around us, and those intertwine with others' stories until them become our own, or until we think they do. I am reminded of Tennyson's Maud: the melancholic hero continually confuses his memories with scenes from famous books and stories so that his past is surreally interwoven with fictions.

I suppose I can only hope that L.M. and Louisa were writing stories about the beauty and happiness that they did experience themselves, even if in tiny doses or that they had hope that others would live the dreams that they never could. Perhaps that dream was simply to write more honestly and searchingly about their lives through their characters rather than writing "moral pap" to help their families live comfortably. Either way, these women are people I respect deeply for writing about all they did in the midst of their predicaments. Their fictions have marked my past indelibly.

Grandmother Adventures: Volume Two

One of Granny Pam's greatest storytelling talents is that she manages to talk about all sorts of details about life in an earlier era that everyone else has conveniently blotted out of their minds. Everyone knows that back in the bad-old-days, all people who were not white were treated appallingly, women had far less opportunities and being homosexual was even more difficult than it is now. The minority group that very few people have ever acknowledged are those born mentally handicapped. They cannot tell others how badly they were treated in the past because they have no voice in a society obsessed with a high "intelligence quotient".

Granny Pam's story starts with a woman who was a friend of hers. Tragically, her friend's husband suddenly became ill and was rushed to hospital. It was discovered he had terminal cancer, and only a few more months to live, which he had to spend in the hospital owing to the nature of his illness. His wife had a violent dislike for people who are ill or infirm, and as a result, Granny Pam - on her visits to the hospital - had to placate him and tell him that his wife wasn't coming to visit.

He passed away, and the lady re-married. She fell pregnant again and gave birth to a beautiful little girl. Unfortunately for this little girl, she was born with a heart condition, a cleft palate and downs syndrome. Granny Pam's friend left the hospital without her baby, effectively disowning her. The lady's mother had the same distaste for "abnormal" people and would not have anything to do with the child. The lady's husband went to see Granny Pam, and begged her - the neighbourhood mother with her thriving nursery school - to look after their baby, as his wife would hardly acknowledge her existence.

Granny Pam knew nothing about caring for children with special needs, but took the baby back to her home with some helpful hints from the nurse. The baby's cleft palate meant she could not drink properly, and had to be fed with an eye-dropper. Her heart condition was such that she could be in trouble at any time and need to be rushed to hospital. The sign Granny Pam had to look for was the baby's hands turning blue. Granny Pam explains how she would wake up anxiously at all hours of the night and stealthily shine a torch toward the baby's hands to make sure her fingers were still pink.

The mother relented after Granny Pam had been nurturing the child for about six months and took her back again. She was always sickly, however, and some might say - considering the attitude of her mother and other people of the day - luckily, the little girl passed away when she was just two years old.

Much is made of standing up for those members of our population who cannot speak for themselves. There are animal rights groups, groups for abused women and children ("normal" children, of course) and groups for many other peoples who may be victimised. I wonder, though, how many people work for the good of those who society likes to stuff away in corners and slide their eyes past, learning not to see.

Luckily there are some people whose very nature it is not to be blinded and not to forget.