The Importance of Tea (Part VIII)

“My Cups Runneth Over”

Our dinner dishes are routinely done by my 7:30 teatime, and though we have a dishwasher, I prefer to do them by hand. My evening teacup is usually in the load, left over from the night before and the first item to be used after washing, often within minutes of the sink being drained. I’ll dry it myself rather than use a different cup for my ritual chamomile brew.

You would think that the cup doesn’t matter. Apparently, it does. One night I was late getting to the dishes. I came into the kitchen, saw my gold teacup awaiting its wash, and experienced a curious bout of mild panic. I had naively imagined my tea steeping while I did the dishes, but could it happen in another cup? Ha! Rather than talk myself into sensible behaviour, I watched myself fill the sink with hot soapy water, wash the gold teacup, peel off the rubber gloves, hand-dry the cup, then set it aside with the bag o’ tea dust installed. Then I flipped on the kettle and proceeded to wash the daily dishes. End result: evening tea drunk from the evening cup—I neither use that cup during the day nor drink anything other than chamomile tea from it.

That got me to thinking. When I inventoried my teacup collection (they’re actually mugs; only when invited to tea at The Manse do I sip from a china cup and saucer—and yes, I have a favourite there as well), I realized that specific cups exist for specific teas, and now I’m wondering if I need professional help.

If I do, it likely began in childhood. Growing up as one of five kids, I specifically remember a set of Melmac (?) cereal bowls with different-coloured rims—mine was orange, and if I had caught anyone else spooning corn flakes from it, I’d have freaked out on them. Same rule applied to the coffee mugs that appeared in my teens. Truly, I don’t remember if I chose the mug or it was chosen for me, but once I’d drunk from the vessel with the taupe flowers garishly splashed upon the ceramic, it owned me. I drank everything but coffee (yuk) from that cup—soup, broth, hot chocolate, and herb tea. When I left home, the cup stayed behind to serve during visits to the parental units. And I began my own collection.

Today, Ter has one cup—fitting for a woman who only drinks one kind of tea. I, on the other extreme of first-world frippery, have five. Five. Excluding the glass tumbler I use on all-writing days. And when company demands that I share, I try not to cringe when my green-ginger-in-the-morning-on-a-day-off cup is conscripted to contain something black and sweet. How I’ve come to this “singular usage” policy is a mystery, but what truly alarms me is that I’ve started doing it at work, too, with three cups and counting.