Your Turn By Tracy Lewis

Lessons From a Little Green Teapot

On my kitchen counter sits a beautiful, bright green teapot made of construction paper. Not china, not porcelain, but construction paper. It has a little paper pocket attached to its front that contains one lone tea bag. It’s cinnamon, I think.
My son decorated it at school and gave it to me for Mother’s Day. I adore it! It ranks right up there with the picture of a limousine that he gave me for my birthday.
You see, my “frugal” husband has promised me a ride in a limo ever since our wedding day 13 years ago, when I very stupidly agreed to save a few bucks and be driven to my wedding reception in my uncle’s Honda Accord.
Having heard this story countless times, my son wanted to make sure that I got my limo and made me one himself. It even has a hot tub. (The kid thinks of everything!)
My teapot and limo share a special place in my heart along with the blue and white paper clip bracelet and the vase full of paper flowers recently made especially for me by my darling daughter.
As I’m sure all mothers will attest, these gifts are the purest treasures in the world.

Imagine, then, my shock when my son looked at me recently, crestfallen, and asked, “Mama, don’t you like the tea that I gave you?” I couldn’t imagine why he would ask me something like that. I remember gushing over it for at least five full minutes when he gave it to me.
I said, “Of course…I love it! Why?”
“Because it’s been sitting there forever and you haven’t drunk it yet.”
I tried to think of a decent response to his observation. I love tea. I remember thinking when he gave it to me that I’d never tried cinnamon tea, but I love cinnamon as much as I love tea, so mixing the two together sounded like a glorious idea!

I know that I’ve meant to drink the tea. I’ve looked at it sitting there on the counter many times, thinking, “I’m going to have some tea.” Then, I’d get distracted and do something else like unload the dishwasher or something equally entertaining.
I had to ask myself, “Why haven’t I had my cinnamon tea?!”
This is what I’ve determined. I’m just too busy to drink tea. This is the sad and sorry state of my life. I don’t have the luxury of the kind of time that’s required to commit to a cup of tea.

You see, drinking tea does actually involve a time commitment. You don’t just grab a cup of tea and drink it in the car on your way to work/dentist appointment/guitar lesson/fill in your own blank.
When you make the decision to have a cup of tea, you are making a decision to take a minimum of 20 minutes out of your life to complete the activity.
By the time you boil the water, steep the tea bag, add the sugar and/or milk, take the tea bag out, strain it over your cup and gingerly walk it over to the trash can so as not to get drippy, brown liquid all over the place, you’ve easily killed 10 minutes before the tea has even crossed your lips!
After all this prep work is completed, it’s time to actually drink the tea.
Tea is not supposed to be gulped. It’s just plain wrong. First of all, it’s hot. You’ll burn your tongue off. That kills your whole “having a relaxing cup of tea” mojo.

Second, it goes against all laws of civility to gulp it like a Neanderthal. We sip tea because that’s just the way it is. Done in such a fashion, this should take at least another 10 minutes.
So, there you have it. It takes 20 minutes to drink a cup of tea.
The thing is, I really do like tea. I like that it requires me to stop running around like a manic wreck and just “be” for a few minutes. I need to do that more often. In fact, I don’t know a single mom who doesn’t need to do that more often.
And so, I’m resolving to properly drink a cup of tea at least once per week henceforth and forevermore. As much as I love my green paper teapot with the lone teabag, I’m realizing that the real Mother’s Day gift that my son (and his clever teacher) gave me this year was a little bit of downtime. Too bad it took me so long to figure that out!

Tracy Lewis is the family resource coordinator for Colonial Heights Public Schools, a family educator for Commonwealth Parenting and co-author of the upcoming “1-2-3 Magic for Kids,” with Dr. Thomas W. Phelan. She lives in Sussex County with her husband and two children.

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