As I contemplated writing this, a hot cup of Tetley tea steamed beside me in one of my numerous mugs—this one squat, round, and bearing the word “Mom” on its side. Let it be said that I LOVE TEA!
And not any tea … no, I stock my shelves with Tetley Teas: regular black, decaf black, and my new favorite, black/green tea. I also keep Boston Mint-in-Tea on hand for those times when either my tummy wants the soothing of the mint or my spirit needs the comfort of the mint vapors (did that long before the fad of fragrant oils for health).
My cupboards … and storage areas … abound with mugs of all shapes, colors, and sizes. Some have sayings such as, “I NEED CHOCOLATE!” Others have cute characters from Winnie the Pooh® and Peanuts®. Many have animals, flowers, and birds. Some are handpainted by our daughters, including one 
with a pinecone hanging on pine branches, compliments of our eldest daughter’s knowledge of my love and her animosity for pinecones. A ceramic travel-mug, paint by a different daughter with Christmas designs, I of course use year-round. And don’t let me get started on Christmas mugs; that’s another storage-shed’s worth!
As with coffee, tea brings memories of people, and yes, as with my post on coffee, I think of my grandmother, though she wasn’t a tea drinker. Those memories come from her love for china teacups. Her collection came to me when she joined Jesus, and I use them with care.
“What other people fill those memories?” you ask. Two of them probably had stock in the Tetley tea company … or should have had with the vast amounts of tea they guzzled throughout their lives. My dad drank two cups every day before he left for work. If at home, my mom made multiple pots for him, boiled dark and strong in our Corningware teapot, the one with the sweet blue cornflower on its bright white bowl. He took several teaspoons of sugar and a deluge of milk in it, enough so that the dark liquid turned a milky tan color. In fact, that’s how I learned to drink it and did so for years until I decided to cut the sugar back, then the milk, until now, my tea needs just a tad of milk, no sugar, please. And I only drink one cup that high in caffeine a day.
Not so my aunt! Before she went to heaven, she had graduated from the normal-sized teapot to an extra-large tea-urn! It still had the required cornflower on its full belly and made a copious amount of tea. And where my dad boiled his until it turned dark, my aunt boiled hers until the cows came home … and went back out the next morning! Strong doesn’t begin to describe it. And get this! She refilled that pot at least three or four times a day! She loved that Tetley tea.
Oh yes, it had to be Tetley, the “tiny little tea leaf” tea. Strong enough to suit even the British (maybe?), though the company did come out with a British blend. However, speaking of the company, we—our daughters and I—have a bone to pick with them. Why did they stop dividing the rows of teabags in their boxes with the bookmarks?!
“Bookmarks?” you wonder. Ah, yes, the white rectangular pieces of cardboard between the four rows of 25 teabags each, just perfect for making into bookmarks. Another memory of my aunt is the many letters arriving by mail into which she slid several of those bookmarks-read-to-be-made for our girls. Or the visits during which she’d pull out a rubber-banded stack of them (remember, she drank a LOT of tea). The girls would use stickers, markers, and other craft supplies to design the bookmarks. The photo shows two I still have stuck in with my Christmas book collection.
Today, the boxes contain no bookmarks, sad to say. Where are we to find them? Well, guess what? Today, I discovered one! No, not in my Tetley box, but in the boxed version of Boston Mint-in-Tea. Nestled between the bags … ah, what wonder, what joy! A bookmark just waiting to be decorated for … hmm, for me? For our daughter who loved making them for me? Or maybe for a young grandchild, just learning about chapter
books?
See what I mean? Tea makes me think of people. And I feel God would be pleased at that. He made tea leaves, tiny or otherwise, for our enjoyment. And He made the people in my life for me to love and enjoy … past, present, and future. May your tea-drinking years bring many times of refreshment and joy with the people you most love.
Speaking of those people and drinking tea, what stories do you have about tea? What brand did your family drink most? What flavors do you like in the wide array of them on the grocery store shelves and the cafés around the world? Share your stories with us!
“Triassic, Jurassic, Cretaceous! Such difficult words, my gracious! They happened, you know, way back long ago, for these were the dinosaur ages!”
cassette into the car’s tape player to surprise the girls. Singing with different music helped pass the time. This one delighted the girls and their mama and would be played often, with lots of dinosaur stomping and roaring … and little girl giggles.
We found the length of each dinosaur … without the benefit of internet for all of you hurrying to google it. Holly’s came in at a whopping 75 feet, while “Cera” barely topped 30. Next, we cut one-foot lengths of colored yarn. Each time the girls read a book, they chose a colored strand and tied it to the last one they’d chosen, winding them into a raggedy ball. Of course, since “Cera’s” ball was completed sooner, “our Sarah” started adding to the bronto-ball to finish it.
world do you make a parasaurolophus’ long head protrusions stay in place?
I love this photo taken by our daughter Faith. First, I think the photo itself showcases her photography gifting. Second, I enjoy the walks we take in the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, also called Pine Creek Gorge, where she took this photo. And finally, I love it because I love the whitetail deer!
Watching the spotlight or the headlights, depending on our seat in the car, we wait for glimpses of shining eyes in the spotlight or some critter crossing the road in front of us. I never lose the delight of a doe’s warm eyes if close enough to see them or of the white spots dotting the tiny fawns. I never tire of using the binoculars to see if the deer sports antlers to excite the hunters in the car. And I never forget the count … um, was that fifty-two or fifty-three … oh well, maybe I do.
bends in the road from Galeton, PA, toward camp never lessens. I inch forward on the seat, straining against the seatbelt, picturing the final turn. There it is! The farm where the owner lives and the barn where he used to milk his cows in days gone by. (I would watch the owner’s kids bring the cows from the pasture, across the creek, and down the lane to the barn, only to repeat it the next morning in reverse.) The lane, tucked between the two buildings, never changes, except from rutted and dusty in the hottest months to rutted and muddy from recent rain showers.
heaven—even if it’s only for a week.
Thunder echoed through the hollow, rattling the loose window pane in the cabin door. The afternoon’s thunderstorm had grown into a wailing, angry force, and with the darkness, it seemed to be trying to fight its way inside the cabin. Rain pounded the roof, wind howled and whipped the walls and windows. Lightning bolts streaked across the night sky, leaving eerie periods of illumination.
the earlier part of the day, change to something from a movie about whitewater rafting. Huge crashes, one after another, sounded like dynamite exploding, first up the hollow a ways, then closer, in front of the cabin in which we sat listening, shivering, wondering if the building would blow apart any second.
yesterday, nor of the years I’d spent wading its waters. During the night, what we mistook for thunder was huge boulders tossed by rising waters. Rocks, as large as monster truck tires, had been tossed like leaves across the water and deposited in another section of the creek hundreds of feet downstream. The power necessary to uproot these boulders from where they’d sat for who knows how long and tumble them like children’s building blocks to a new resting place, seemed unimaginable. We’d heard it, we saw the aftermath, but we couldn’t take it in. 
I fell in love with cross-stitch the first time I made a sample kit at a party. I figured this would be like many sales party where you gather with friends to hear about some products and spend money you don’t have through a sense of obligation to the hostess. And the best part comes when they break out the yummy treats at the end!
next 40 years. I gobbled up every pattern, bought scads of embroidery floss, completed kits and pictures for gift-giving. Then I infected my mother-in-law with the bug, and she cross-stitched larger projects than I liked tackling, such one with three angels she made for me because of our three daughters.
hing, using a piece of the waste canvas which can then be pulled out of the finished design thread by thread. I cross-stitched on tote bags, nylon wallets, clothing, a bowling towel, and more. I even created my own line of cross-stitched ties, mostly forest animals, which my husband loved showing off at work, including a deer which we had to turn into Rudolph for Christmastime.
thought of what wonderful words they should type next. Then came the well-known sound of the backspace bar as sentences were written … re-written … deleted … changed … written the same way as the first time … and then deleted again. Finally, one of them would grab a jar of peanut butter which was never too far away, and they’d scoop out a spoonful to eat as they thought. Somehow, the magic never failed and soon they would be back to typing away.
Now, as the Montrose Christian Writers Conference draws closer, I am spending more and more time in front of my computer trying to write furiously. But with extra writing comes extra writer’s block, and I will be forever grateful that my mom and sister instilled me with the great peanut butter secret. Dipping a spoon into a jar of creamy goodness (crunchy peanut butter is an abomination) always starts my creative juices flowing again. I like to think the stickiness is pulling the block away, leaving a fresh path of thought in its wake. As I’ve said before and I’ll say again: “Writing Peanut Butter to the rescue!”
This week’s story word begins with a capital letter: July. Most people in PA think summer, Independence Day, swimming, picnics, and vacations. I could stories about those, some funny (one vacation in Potter County when I slept in a bed with my aunt, woke during the night, whacked her with my stuffed horse, then lay down and went to sleep), some exciting (the 4th of July fireworks display in Galeton, PA, where we sat right under the place they exploded and had embers cascading over us), some scary (the year 1995 when I went into premature labor around eight weeks into the pregnancy and was put on immediate bedrest for the duration … all went well in the end, daughter #3 only three weeks early).
everything Christmas since I shoved off the covers Christmas morning, anxious for Mom and Dad to call us to come down to check what filled our stockings. Fun traditions from my childhood Christmases spilled over into our daughters’ lives, including a few new ones. I’ll share about those in detail over December blog posts (I know, teaser!).
One hot day, our daughter, Faith, brought me a delightful surprise—a Christmas-in-July gift! She’d stopped at our local florist for a bouquet of red, green, and white flowers. The owner searched for a tiny Christmas notecard and a plastic Christmas tree pick to add to the festive holiday ensemble. Faith had also picked up a new notebook and a two-pack of pretty designer pens for me to use on a special writing project. And she topped it off with a cold bottle of Starbucks’ vanilla Frappuccino.
When I think of words which entice memories from all five senses, pickles come early on the list. I see mounded dirt covered with green vines, tiny hands moving the leaves to peek at midget cucumbers growing. I feel prickly skins as I scrubbed them prior to slicing and dicing for canning. I smell pervasive odors of onions and vinegar as we mixed them with the pickling 
spices. And taste … ah, those canned bread and butter pickles, a bit sweet, a bit tart. My senses reel with the memories.
At the roller rink where I spent my teen years, they offered live organ music to skate by. I can still hear lilting melodies perfect for free-spirited wheeling around the floor. Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” melted into “Rockin’ Robin” from the 1950s. We “shook, rattled, and rolled” with Bill Haley’s hit, then slowed for a couples’ skate to Bobby Darin’s “Dream Lover.” 
Today, another pickle brings me much joy, and since it IS Christmas-in-July time, let’s talk about it! Early in our daughters’ childhood, we found a unique ornament—a blown-glass pickle with a story. Always drawn to things with stories, we read how the pickle tradition started in Germany. Parents hid the ornament in the Christmas tree after the children fell asleep. Christmas morning found the kiddos scrambling to be the first to find the pickle, for the one who did received an extra gift! We bought that pickle and continue to hang it today, granting the find-ee a special gift (usually something to share with everyone—a box of Pop Tarts or cocoa).
legaciesletloose 