An invitation to celebrate, console, connect – it’s tea-o’clock

My wife and I received a teak tray with raised sides and cutout handles as a wedding gift from a family friend. It was a practical gift for which we had no immediate practical use, and we stashed it with our surfeit of salad bowls (seven).

A few years later, we were wrangling three active boys in a Boston suburb. It felt as though it had been ages since we’d had an adult conversation during daylight hours for longer than three minutes. We were constantly having to break off to intervene, redirect, or serve snacks. When the guys were asleep, we were nearly so ourselves.

One summer Saturday afternoon, we sat on the front porch watching our sons ride bikes on our cul-de-sac. Our role was to referee and yell “Car!” when appropriate. After they’d settled into their play, my wife disappeared inside.

She emerged minutes later bearing the wooden tray, now delightfully transformed. It was spread with a folded kitchen towel – a tea towel! – set with two fine china teacups, a creamer, a pot of tea, and a plate of cookies. It was as refined as it was out of place – a string quartet on a subway car.

My wife set the tray down on the chipped gray wooden porch floor, and we anchored ourselves on either side of the little island of elegance, our feet on the warm brick steps.

She explained that a friend had told her that loose-leaf tea is best and that it tastes better in thin china cups. She was right. And service on good china urges one to make an effort, in the same way that dressing up makes one behave a bit better. The tray was an event. We pulled up our figurative socks and let the calm of a small luxury embrace us. We sipped. We conversed. We yelled, “Car!”

The moment lasted till the teapot was empty and the cookies consumed – with help, once the kids caught on.

That was the first time. The tea tray was welcomed with more and more frequency. I got home too late from work for tea on weeknights, but we began making time for tea on weekends. We would announce – part warning, part invitation – that Mom and Dad were going to have tea. For the boys this meant that cookies or chocolate (soon the treat of choice) would be on offer, and they could swoop by and have some. But they also knew they could linger. Teatime was a good time to get our attention. We’d be relaxed, comfortable, and available for 45 minutes or so. What’s on your mind, precious bear?

Tea is different from a snack. Snacks can wait, but tea has both an urgent and a leisurely component. “I’ll make tea” means it’s time to store the document or put away the wheelbarrow. Tea is served hot on all but the hottest days in our household, which means you should be in place when the tea tray arrives. Hot tea also means you cannot drink it quickly. You have to slow down to a pace that invites engagement. Whatever you’re doing, you can surely stop doing it for the time it takes to sip tea and savor some chocolate.

Teatime is an invitation to check in, to connect and console, to cheer and celebrate, to make plans for tomorrow – or for postretirement. Tea is something to look forward to. “I have something to tell you. We’ll talk at tea.” Letters are saved for reading aloud. During the pandemic, when I began working from home and we suddenly could enjoy tea every afternoon, we also read books aloud at teatime – comforting books. It helped.

We’ve added refinements over the years. We use a British one-pot tea measure for loose-leaf tea, and put the tea in a basket infuser. We rinse the leaves with boiling water to decaffeinate them, and rinse the pot with hot water too, to warm it first. The infuser is removed when the tea is brewed, to avoid stewing the leaves, and a tea cozy does help keep the pot hot.

Teatime is a moment, a respite, an occasion to review and update. Tea is an opportunity for a directed or nondirected conversation. It’s an open-ended invitation, the response to which is different every time the wedding-present teak tray arrives. Having tea is like staying up all night talking, 45 minutes at a time. I love having tea with my wife for what it is, what it does, and not least for its pleasant association with judicious amounts of chocolate.

And, as my wife showed me on that summer Saturday years ago, the occasion of tea can come to you, wherever you happen to be. All you need is a tray.