A true home is one of the most sacred of places. It is a sanctuary into which men flee from the world’s perils and alarms. It is a resting-place to which at close of day the weary retire to gather new strength for the battle and toils of tomorrow. It is the place where love learns its lessons, where life is schooled into discipline and strength, where character is molded.
It was early in the morning – the March timid sun was just barely peaking over the snowy horizon … a few winter birds were stirring and singing quietly from the tops of the pine tree. Without wanting to wake anyone, I tiptoed out the back door and slid into our family truck. My husband was still home before work and this was the only time I could slip away – as such, this was the arranged time to go pick up a used teapot I had found on a used site.
You see, our last tea pot, which we use for Tea at Two on Tuesdays (and well, for tea whenever!) slid out of my hands the other week and shattered on the floor. How badly I felt as I picked up the pretty, broken pieces. It had been a lovely teapot and served our family well, even if only for a short time. It was a shame I broke it and it left me feeling a little bit sad.
Well, the unfortunate accident meant it was time to source out another good used teapot that would be well loved and used daily. After a few messages back and forth via the internet, with my joy, I located a pretty used teapot. The owner did not live near me, but, fortunately, her daughter lived on a street I grew up on half an hour away. We chatted a bit and arranged for the teapot to be delivered to her daughter, where I would drive and pick it up one morning. A perfect transaction.
When the seller asked me what I would be doing with the teapot, I told her about our little family tea parties, our times of reading together with tea and cookies and explained I had six daughters … surely, if the teapots survive all our family times, I will gladly pass on the teapots to my daughters when they are grown.
“Oh wow, that’s a lot of children!”, she responded, laughing. “I have three daughters and two sons.”
“What fun you must have had,” I replied, “Children are a lot of work, but it is also a great blessing to have them around!”
To this, the lady jokingly replied that her grown children were not all blessings most days …
“Maybe if I had more tea parties and read books with them, they’d be more of a blessing to me now,” she said, with a little laugh.
I pondered this statement as I drove back home, the new pretty teapot [and matching cream and sugar] sat safely nestled in the seat beside me. Returning home, I carefully placed the teapot on the dining room hutch for the younger children to see. They admired how pretty it was, the delicate pink and blue flowers and asked when the peppermint tea would be served.
The morning continued and soon it was time for tea and a good read aloud session from The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. The children gathered as my eldest daughter handed out her freshly baked cookies as a treat.
Some days with our tea time, we read poetry out loud. Other days, I catch up on our current book that we are reading out loud together.
I watched the children gather noisily around as I fingered the page in the chapter, waiting to begin the reading.
Strange, I thought to myself, that I had never seen the time spent together having tea as an investment in the future relationship … it somehow changed everything for me in that moment. Yes, it would be easier to go off and have tea myself with less spills, less interruptions and more quiet moments. But tea together, reading a good book and sitting around the fire suddenly seemed more important at this moment in time.
All this time of afternoon teas, boiling water, pouring tea and spending the extra time to lay out a tea table, opening great books and spending half an hour or so reading … I had only see it for the moment; I had never thought about the long term investment … I really had not thought much about the future and what tiny seeds perhaps these little teas would be planting …
Later in the week, during nap times and quiet rests, after toys were picked up and big girls were assigned a quiet reading hour, I walked into the back room and found my six year old with a tea table all set up. It was for mommy and her, she explained with a twinkle in her eye. Set next to a radiant, warm, fire, with the winter snow falling outside, it was a picture of true contentment and coziness. She poured the lukewarm peppermint tea and I pulled up a chair and joined her at the pretty little table.
A tiny seed was beginning to grow…
“Each day of our lives we make deposits in the memory banks of our children.”
P.S. Would you like a recipe for those delicious heart shaped cookies?
Heart Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
⅓ cup granulated sugar
½ cup light-brown sugar
1 large egg yolk
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp salt
1 ½ cups semi-sweet mini-chocolate chips
Cream together the butter and sugars. Add the egg yolk and vanilla.
Sift together the flour and salt, and add to the butter and sugar mixture one cup at a time, until completely incorporated. The dough will be a bit crumbly.
Mix in the chocolate chips.
Shape the dough into a disc shape and wrap in plastic and chill for 1/2 an hour.
Roll out the dough, cut and place on parchment paper. Chill again for about 15 minutes. Bake at 350 degrees until golden brown.
Enjoy with a pot of peppermint tea and read a good book with your children – no matter their age.
by Gigi
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