Remembering Tea Time

The weather turned decidedly more fall like last week.
I love it.
The cooler temps mean I am back to my morning cup of tea.

There is nothing like hearing the kettle whistle
and pouring that steaming water into a cup.
Last week, I got out my grandmother's tea cups.
They are dainty, and flowered, and pretty, and...
So full of memories.

My Gramma, whom I wrote about here. used to serve us tea in them a good bit.
Hot tea, sugar, and milk.
Homemade cookies, or if we were lucky, apple küchen.
Watching her move about a kitchen was neat.
She did things "just so" and was usually humming or singing in German.
We loved using the "fancy cups", and despite the fact that I was a tom-boy who
broke things at a furious rate, she would let me use these.
I was always cautioned to "be gentle!"
And then she would often utter "Nicht Noch Einmal!"

So, taking out a cup, just one, was hard.
It made me miss my Gramma terribly.
It brought back the painful reality of death.
The things my boys will never hear from directly from her.
But if we put away these tangible memories,
we miss out on passing along the bits and pieces of the past
that make us, well... us.

So despite the pain, I choose to remember.
And today, I will have tea, in fancy tea cups, with my 11 year old son.
I made cookies and muffins for us yesterday.
I will caution him to be gentle.
I will rebuke him in German, and hopefully,
create a memory for him to share with his own children someday.

One of my very favorite quotes...

“It is often said that something may survive of a person after his death if that person was an artist and put a little of himself into his work. It is perhaps in the same way that a sort of cutting taken from one person and grafted onto the heart of another continues to carry on its existence even when the person from whom it had been detached has perished.” 
                                                                                                             -Marcel Proust