Tea with Mom
Contributed by Amy Davenport
I have invited my mother to tea this afternoon. Just thinking about the prospect of seeing her fills me with happiness. I get out the white tablecloth with blue hand-embroidered flowers – a gift I gave her when I returned from Greece so many years ago. Somehow it came back to me when she passed away. And, of course, I will use the blue and white china teacups with the dragon design that we both love so much. I will brew a pot of Earl Grey tea in the matching teapot. It is her favorite. My mother always loved a cup of hot tea with a little milk and a spoonful of honey. When I was a teenager, she would bring me a steaming mug when she came to wake me up in the morning. Waking up to go to school was always hard, but a hot cup of tea with milk and honey made it easier. And then there was four o’clock tea. My mother firmly believed that the English had it right when it came to afternoon tea. It smoothed that transition between afternoon and evening. My best conversations with my mother always happen over tea.
When I think about her arrival, what I most look forward to is the hug she will give me. She will hold me in her arms, kiss me on my cheek and the love that will pass between us will fill me up. Of course, we will both tear up a little – there is so much joy at being together again. “Come in, come in,” I will say. “Sit down. The tea is ready. And I am dying to have you try this honey I found at the Famer’s Market.” “Oh, the Farmer’s Market,” she will say. “How I miss your wonderful Montpelier farmer’s market.”
And we will sit and I will pour the tea and offer her an oatmeal cookie with raisins – the kind I know she loves. And at some point, as if on cue, we will reach out a hand to one another and I will feel those warm, brave, capable hands with long fingers, a little gnarly now thanks to arthritis, but still beautiful. Her fingers interlace with mine. The old familiar message is still there – “You are o.k. You can do anything!”
We will talk about gardens: how has the garden weathered the winter? What survived? What was lost? What’s the plan this year? How are the peonies.? I will tell her about the magnificent flowering this Spring of the magnolia she gave me some forty years ago – a magnolia stellata or star magnolia which flowers in April before it leafs out. It was only three feet tall when she bought it for me. Now its branches reach up to the second-floor windows. We will laugh about how its white flowers look like hundreds of tiny white handkerchiefs pinned on the tree. And we will marvel at the soft, subtle but infinitely sweet scent that emanates from them. Sweeter but far more subtle than the crab apple blossoms or the peonies that are still to come. We will discuss and conclude that each scent is different, but all are wonderful.
“And how are you?” she will want to know. And I will tell her that I am fine, but I miss her. I miss her loving embrace and her wisdom. And I have so many questions. I want to ask how she managed to raise seven children and to give us all so much love to the point that each of us believed deep in our hearts that she loved us the best. I have raised two “only children” (they are 12 years apart) and I cannot imagine raising seven. And although I know there were many heart aches and hardships for her along the way – drugs and mental illness to name just two, she will speak only of the joy that her children brought her. I will tell her how close the four of us who are still here have become over the years. She will beam with happiness, and I know I will have given her the greatest gift.
Do you remember, I ask, that time when we drove across country together. Oh yes, she says and astutely observes: “You were not happy about my decision to drive with you!” She is right, of course. When she called to let me know that she would meet me in California and drive home with me six weeks before the end of my sophomore year in college, I was deeply depressed. Driving across country with my mother would take at least five days. How could I possibly endure that?
And yet, it turned out to be one of my all-time favorite trips. We laughed a lot and totally enjoyed each other. Our favorite moment was when we heard a warning on the radio about imminent tornadoes somewhere in the middle of Nebraska. We stopped at a gas station, and I asked the attendant what we should do if we saw one coming. He answered with wry humor: “Drive as fast as you can in the opposite direction!” The memory of that moment never fails to make us laugh.
What her new life is like remains a mystery. I am curious, but I do not ask and she does not volunteer. Our cups are empty now. The cookies eaten. There is time for one last hug, and she is gone. My eyes well up, but my heart overflows. She has not really left. She is always here.
