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When I was younger (early adolescence) we went on holiday with family friends of ours; a British family whose parents seemed to get on with my parents on an equally friendly level. It seems that you reach a certain point in your life when if you can find anyone you can stomach for more than an hour, they’re quite a keeper. If they come complete with a wife or husband that your partner can get along with and kids that your kids can play with, regardless of age difference; LOCK THEM DOWN. For any family friendly activity from here on out. Even as a child I could tell that these were friends that may come and go (our families’ have not kept contact in later years) but I believe that both parental camps were satisfied with what was being offered, with regards to good, decent, filler friendship.
My father came to know the husband/father from work (as you do). They were both in their respective air forces and the British family was living in South Africa for a little while as the father was working on a project of sorts with my Dad. … This could be false information. I didn’t really pay attention. You never do.
Both father/husbands were away for work at this particular point and so only the wives/mothers and their respective children were to go away together. There was already a peculiar mood to the whole situation. Going away with just my mother and brother was confusing for me. And then there was this family that I didn’t really know. This absence of fathers laid another level of strange on the already odd circumstances. Our family holidays
had been, up to this point, pretty consistent place-wise and while we would visit extended family or friends at our holiday destination, it was usually only us. Further, my Dad had always been the ringleader of sorts of your little family unit and so in my mind we seemed at a bit of a loss. Fragmented. Looking back on it, it was as if I was experiencing a broken home. It was awkward.
had been, up to this point, pretty consistent place-wise and while we would visit extended family or friends at our holiday destination, it was usually only us. Further, my Dad had always been the ringleader of sorts of your little family unit and so in my mind we seemed at a bit of a loss. Fragmented. Looking back on it, it was as if I was experiencing a broken home. It was awkward.
The peculiarity was heightened as we went to St Lucia; a little estuary on the beach that I had never gone to and was never frequented as a holiday destination by anyone in our family. Compared to the breezy, sunny beaches and panoramic views of Jeffrey’s or St Francis Bay (our family holiday haunts), St Lucia was enclosed with lush vegetation and its air hung with humidity, coating the whole holiday with a distinct mugginess. We stayed at a queer little resort, confined within itself, centred around a murky public pool and an unimpressive clubhouse. It was flat. No perspective. The world was right in front of you. The muted green and white bungalows (cabins? chalets?) were non-descript and had pubic hair in the bleak drawers of the little, bunk-bed rooms.
My brother (two years older) and I of course got to hang out with their children; a sister at an age smack-bang in the middle of my brother and I, and her much younger brother, possibly four years or so. (It is still unbelievable to me how the brackets of age affect you so much at that age. They were important qualifying factors with regards to the structuring of life and were, to me, very often deal-breakers). The girl was tall and skinny, like an elongated British noodle, with her thick hair cut into a short, jutted bob. The boy was pale with blond, blond hair and large, round, frighteningly unstable blue eyes. They were nice. Family friends always are. We swam in the pool and ran around the dense resort, filling our days as children do. (I remember a particular modelling show we put on for ourselves, parading barefoot along the grass, flinging our sarongs this way and that.) I recall the feeling of being in a country not my own. One where vegetation is abundant and city life lies far, far away. One where a sense of danger exists outside the resort walls, the reason as to why we were cloistered inside. What I don’t remember is the beach, even though we’d always been a very beach orientated family. Apart from one blustery hour spent on a vague outline of a strand, the entire holiday seems to have occurred within the resort’s fences. And with only these children. I have faint smears of memory when it comes to our mothers, sitting by the pool in bikinis; laughing, looking beautiful and middle-aged. But that is all. They were unimportant at this time.
One day my brother and I went over to their - I have no recollection of their names - chalet(cottage? cabana?). It was bigger and better than ours. More modern. I put this down to them being British. I am sure we had gone before and definitely after, but this is my only memory of the house itself.
They made tea. It was an overcast day and the clouds hung low throughout the jungle-like resort, trapping us in its confines. The older sister was making it. I don’t recall how I had come to accept a cup as I had, to my knowledge, not had tea before this occasion. If I think logically, it seems difficult to get through twelve or so years of life without a cup of tea passing my lips, but if it had, it never left an impression.
- Milk in before or after water?
- Um…
I was at a loss. I didn’t know. I felt uneducated and ignorant in this clearly long-lived, very ordinary ritual for this family. I left her to make my tea however she recommended.
I don’t remember drinking the damn thing. A smear of a sip rests in my mind but no recollections of if I felt it was too hot, too sweet, too milky or just right. I guess there was a sense of comfort. But the rain outside (it was raining by this time) would have caused any warm drink consumed inside to taste doubly good. I guess it didn’t blow my mind. But it wasn’t unenjoyable.
The rest of the holiday is a complete and utter blur, with no other glimpses of what occurred in the time we were there. The peculiar atmosphere of it, however, is not uncommon in my life now. A mugginess. A certain anxiety.
Ever since I began drinking tea when I was about twenty years old, and then only properly when I was about twenty-two, this memory has begun realising itself in my mind. It was the day I started questioning why I was not a tea-drinker. These odd reservations crystallized in conversations with friends about Rooibos soaked dummies, milky Five Roses as a young child and tea in bed on cold school mornings. I would cock my head and smile knowingly, while actually furrowing with confusion. I had none of these memories.
And when and how I started drinking it, was also without occasion. It happened gradually, haltingly. I took a cup when offered but never made my own, never lusted after it. A strong memory of a male friend visiting me in high school and asking for tea has never left me, as he scolded me for not stirring it adequately. Of course I didn’t know what I was doing. An intelligent girl so unschooled in this domestic nicety. I still found tea average; sometimes good, sometimes nice, sometimes bland. I guess I just never really got it. But my affection grew with small instances; a cup with a lover in bed, milky tea made special the only way Lauren can, the burst of sweetness when dousing a slice of cake, and every spill that has accompanied every cup (I have never made it through one cup of tea without splashing it about, particularly on myself). My love grew with the morning-after cup, which inspired me to write this little sonnet to the Ceylon:
(to follow, I've lost it in a notebook)
And now, most mornings I wake up to tea and desire for it when upset, uncomfortable, cold or lonely. Or happy and content. Or bored. There is no prescribed time for my tea. Tea is what I offer and what I hope you will. What I readily choose over another alcoholic drink late at night. Stumble Drunk Home Tea. Stumble Home Drunk Tea. What I drink at home when I want to curb hunger pangs or when I want to settle my stomach or fall asleep. It is no longer black tea that drives me but green, camomile, earl grey… I have even been known to dabble with the red fruits.
And yet… And yet and yet. I think I could still give or take tea. I’ve gone without it before. After the first few days of habit wane I don’t think much of it. I feel almost treacherous saying this, as if I am betraying Almighty Tea, but it really is just a replacement isn’t it? For something I want and am not feeling at that moment; warmth, comfort, love, food. It has simply become a practice, a routine. And now since I’ve realised this I look at each cup with scrutiny. Do I really need you? I ask it quietly. Or are you but a vice? I peer into it. I critically swirl it around my mouth. I enjoy it. Or don’t. Is it but a matter of course; a consumerist habit fuelled by lovely images and stories of mothers and love? Is it dependency? Or is it a beautiful comfort that I should hold dear?
I really don’t know. And I don’t particularly care to. This story wasn’t about tea.
