A Tea Reader by Katrina Avilla Munichiello Read Free Book Online

remember Mrs. Shandon and little Mary at their five o’clock tea, and the extract with which I conclude:
    â€œSo Mrs. Shandon went to the cupboard, and in lieu of a dinner made herself some tea. And in those varieties of pain of which we spoke anon, what a part of confidante has that poor teapot played ever since the kindly plant was introduced among us! What myriads of women have cried over it, to be sure! what sick-beds it has smoked by! what fevered lips have received refreshment from out of it! Nature meant very gently by women when she made that tea plant; and with a little thought, what a series of pictures and groups the fancy may conjure up, and assemble round the teapot and cup.”

Footnotes
    1 [Certain British spellings have been amended. Ed.]
    2 Harriet Martineau (1802–1876), a noted writer and sociologist.
    3 “Whist” is a classic English card game.

Easy on the Ice
    BY J ULIE L. C ARNEY
    I first noticed my dad putting lemon juice in his iced tea about two months ago. I’m 45 years old and I see my parents every day. I heard the telltale sound of a long-handled spoon stirring something in a tall glass and wondered, “What could he be stirring?”
    My dad is a creature of habit. With some people, “creature of habit” would be a quaint expression to describe someone who tends to wear poplin or who has a regular coffee klatch in the mornings. With my dad, his habits are more like rituals, hard and fast rules, compulsions. Though never officially diagnosed, he’s been known to joke with people about his “obsessive-compulsive” tendencies. My siblings and I talk about his “o.c.” behavior.
    That’s why I was so struck by the simple stirring sound; it was an anomaly. My mom was at work and the dog, who at age 15 has become a nearly full-time patient, was asleep. I wandered into the kitchen and watched the stirring. I can’t remember if I asked him about it or not, but sure enough, the next time we were at a restaurant, his drink order, which had been the same for 70-plus years, had changed. It used to be, “Do you have brewed iced tea, not made from a mix or powder? Unsweetened?” And if they did: “Easy on the ice.” Or, if it’s a “regular” joint, like Morey’s, the family-owned diner my parents eat at every Friday, simply, “Iced tea, easy on the ice.” He doesn’t really want any ice, just cold tea, but the phrase sticks. Suddenly, lemon has been added to the order.
    For as long as I can remember, our house has had brewed, un-sweetened, iced tea available in the fridge year-round. The sound of a tea kettle roaring to a boil and finally working up to a whistle is a near-daily experience. My dad has his own glass—a tall, yellowed, mildly patterned glass filled with cold tea—which accompanies him around the house. Sometimes in the summer, I have iced tea at my parents’ house. Sometimes my sister will visit and have cold tea with lemon juice. My dad eschewed both ice and lemon, at least until recently.
    As kids, we realized the tea thing was different from the habits of other parents who drank coffee, water, milk, or even wine with their dinner. Our dad never drank any of those things, just tea, morning to evening. The big old teapot was a fixture by the stove from year to year. Four tea bags (five if the tea was a weak one that someone had given as a gift) or sometimes loose tea carefully measured into a large tea ball, sat in the pot awaiting the boiling water. After the tea steeped—How many American kids grow up knowing that word?—it was poured into the one-gallon clear glass jug which always resided in the refrigerator. With a metal lid and no label, this jug may have contained orange juice in its previous life, but has now held tea longer than it ever held anything else.
    My dad was a professor at our local state university for most of his career. For reasons we never