I Love Tea

Here I sit, drinking my tea and watching the rain, my mind a lazy, pleasant blank. Presently I notice how stained my tea cup is getting and wonder if my teeth, too, are turning brown. I can’t say for sure when I look at them in the mirror. They don’t look as white as they used to, that’s certain, but then nothing much about my head looks like it used to.

I use whitening toothpaste sometimes. I don’t think it makes a big difference. The only thing it does for me, that I can tell, is kill off skin cells in my cheek lining which then collect into disgusting, gunky strings by morning. That white gunk is even less attractive than yellow teeth and I’m pretty sure that exterminating all those epithelial cells on a nightly basis will be shown, in about twenty years' time, to cause cancer or permanently coarsened, disfigured lips or some other undesirable situation.

But wouldn’t you agree that getting older is all about shifting priorities ? I would not have sacrificed white teeth for the pleasure of drinking strong, black tea fifteen years ago. Now I want my tea, I want it flavourful, and am quite prepared to trample on the weak and helpless in order to get at it, if things ever come to it.

Thank heaven I’ve never enjoyed coffee. The hold it has on its followers is much more powerful than that of tea. We all know people who have to plan out their day around their coffees. A few years ago I drove across the twisting, mountainous breadth of British Columbia with my coffee-addicted sister. Her quest for a decent cup dominated the whole trip. We had to note how many kilometres to the next town, and to consider what size of town it was and therefore what kind of coffee establishments it was likely to have. Then we had to factor in how much coffee she had left in her mug and plot it on a volume/time graph to estimate where we would need to stop. It was a real eye-opener for me. Though I’d always been aware of her coffee dependency — somehow, in any mental image of her, there was always a large travel-mug steaming near one of her elbows — I didn’t pay it any attention. You know how you are with things that don’t directly concern you. I don’t know, for example, what a diabetic person needs to do throughout the day because I’ve never experienced it. But after that all-day drive across the province I am convinced that Theo’s coffee addiction qualifies as a medical condition.

I remember things coming to a head as we coasted into one small town, Theo behind the wheel. Her travel mug had been empty for many miles and though she was making a heroic effort to be pleasant I could see the strain of it showing in her forehead vein. Her plan, I just assumed, was to stop at the first gas station we came to and chug some of their coffee straight out of the pot.

She didn’t even spare the gas station a passing glance. And as the first cafe rounded into view I cried “Hooray! There we are!” and smiled happily at Theo, whom I expected to be wearing an expression of profound relief. But no. She slowed down to look at the cafe as we went past but didn’t appear to have any intention of stopping.

“What – what are you doing?” I said.

“Oh, it didn’t look like it would have good coffee,” she said. Rather cavalier, I thought, for someone in fourth-stage coffee withdrawal.

“But this is a small town,” I sputtered. “There won’t be many to pick from.”

“Well, I’m not drinking the roofing tar they serve at places like that,” she said testily.

We drove along in silence. The main street turned a corner up ahead, and beyond that I could see it climbing away from the town and disappearing into the forest. We only had about two blocks left. I began to drum my fingers nervously on the armrest.

“Oh! Hey! Up ahead!” I burst out, spying another cafe.

“I see it,” came the terse reply.

Incredibly, she showed no sign of committing to this one, either. I could only sit in stunned disbelief as we cruised past.

We followed the street as it made its turn and saw that there was only one block of businesses left. Things were not looking good. Another gas station loomed on our right.

“What about just nipping in there for a cup? I mean, it’s an emergency, right? Isn’t gas station coffee better than no coffee?”

Theo turned on me. “You don’t understand. Bad coffee isn’t coffee at all, it’s poison, it’s sewer sludge, it’s not fit for human consumption. I’m not going to drink it.”

“Well,” I went on, foolishly. “You’re not going to find a Starbucks or whatever in this town.”

“We might,” she said, gripping the wheel tightly and narrowing her eyes. “A lot of tourists come through here in the summer. I’m sure there is some place that serves decent coffee.”

But we had run out of town. The shops had fallen away and it was only scattered houses around us now. Theo found a place to turn around and headed back.

Things went from bad to worse after that. Theo couldn’t believe that no one in town was prepared to brew a decent cup of coffee and she drove up and down side streets with narrow-eyed, silent purpose. We had around 14 hours of driving to do that day and so I was alarmed to note the minutes slipping by as she combed the town with increasing desperation. I continued to spout foolish ideas, including a proposal to bring our own picnic-sized coffee thermos with us in the car the next time. Theo, unwilling to waste any more of her rapidly dwindling life force on a coffee moron like myself, managed to make it clear in a few expressive words that coffee which had sat in a thermos all day wasn’t drinkable.

I can’t even remember where she eventually stopped. I know that we never did find a big coffee chain in town. I think maybe she ended up going into the nicest looking of the hotels we passed.

She returned to her normal, agreeable self within minutes of getting the coffee and the rest of the towns we passed through that day must have been more satisfying in their offerings because there were no further crises and we passed the time happily, trying to understand the rudiments of human behaviour and lamenting the general lack of appreciation for our own wonderfulness.

And now I find that my own tea cup is drained and I must go top it up with fresh stuff from the pot. It occurs to me that my portrayal of coffee addiction is unfair since my own tea habit sometimes places a burden on those around me. Simply put, when you ingest as much liquid in a day as I do, you can’t let yourself get very far away from a toilet. I try to manage my tea drinking. You know, schedule it for when I’m going to be at home for a few hours. But sometimes we go out on the spur of the moment and that can mean real trouble. I always jettison what I can at the last possible second before leaving the house but kidneys filter at their own pace and won’t be hurried.

Just last week M and I went with the kids for a walk down on the newly reclaimed seafront promenade and I didn't enjoy myself a bit because I could feel the tea working its way through my body and starting to queue up in the holding area. I knew that it wouldn’t be long before I needed a toilet. Well, there are no toilets anywhere on the promenade. To make a long story short, we had to cut the walk short, race back to the car and screech off toward the nearest restaurant where I threw myself out of the car and grabbed a passing waiter, shouting “Toilet! Toilet!” in deranged tones. It wasn’t dignified.

But I love tea too much to let such things put me off for long. So off I go now to fill my cup. If you need to find me, I’ll be the one with brown teeth and an adult diaper.