tea, revisited

for the past week, i've felt an almost physical itch to write -- to untangle these wisps of thought that dance around my head. but sometimes they're so wispy they almost vanish before i can pin them down, and most of them probably aren't interesting to anyone but myself, and i can't decide which to write about first, so in the end i just read other people's blogs or Facebook statuses and then Elizabeth needs to nurse again. 

today, though, i'm determined to put some of them down on paper and then hopefully they won't keep chasing their tails around and around in my brain. so, here's the first:

recently, i've rediscovered tea. i went through a phase in college of drinking Lady Grey tea in the afternoons and feeling quite polished when i did so. i had a whole gallon Ziploc bag full of individual tea bags, and would boil water in my little white hot pot which was probably against all dorm living rules. when i was sick there was Throat Coat; when it was winter, there was peppermint; when i was feeling philosophical, there was a plethora of varieties made by Numi tea with pithy sayings on the paper attached to the teabag string. and then, for no particular reason, i stopped drinking it. that same Ziploc bag moved from the college dorm to the Regent Square house to the Altoona house to our own Crafton house, and when we moved to Rome, i pitched the whole thing because they were all very old and probably flavorless (or maybe tea doesn't go bad? but still, it seemed weird to give 15-year-old tea bags to people). 

at some point i acquired a box of red raspberry leaf tea, and always kept a trusty box of Throat Coat around, and probably had a few random bags of herbal tea that the girls would use for their very rare tea parties, but that was it until just this past December, when Mom was in town for Elizabeth's birth and i was picking up some of her favourite foods at the store: to wit, a box of honey vanilla chamomile and a box of peppermint. still, it didn't occur to me to drink any. and then, last month, we had a bitter cold snap. i was padding about the house in my fleece jacket and slippers at 3 pm, trying to think of something that would warm me up. it was too late in the day for coffee, too early in the day for wine, and i didn't really want hot chocolate. then it dawned on me! i brewed a mug of honey vanilla chamomile, splashed in some cream, and stirred.

it may be a cliché, but i'm telling you, that first sip warmed my stomach and my soul. i felt genial, expansive, contemplative. i remembered the study that found that people holding hot beverages are more likely to donate money to charitable causes, and nodded sagely to myself.  what's more, it completely satisfied that mid-afternoon peckishness in a way that has surprised me every single time i drink it. (i successfully lost ten pandemic pounds using Noom prior to getting pregnant with Elizabeth, and people in the Noom Facebook group swear by drinking tea instead of mindlessly housing a bag of chips or ice cream. my initial response to that was -- in the words of a dear friend -- "are you out of your gourd?!". but it's really true!)

i don't imagine i'll go so far as to make loose leaf tea, or even to start collecting more varieties. i'll just take it one box at a time. and goodness knows i'm not giving up my morning coffee, but i have to hand it to the tea drinkers: they're on to something.