I sort of accidentally got into a conversation about tea with a customer the other day. I have to say, talking to (pleasant) customers about mundane things is my favorite part of my job. But anyway, talking to that lovely gentleman about tea got me wanting to blog about tea.

When I started drinking tea, the story of which I’ll come to in a moment, my mother was thrilled. Apparently she was a huge tea drinker and had wanted to introduce me to the magical beverage since I was young. She just never bothered to actually try and serve me any for fear of putting me off of it for good. I think the logic there is kind of funny, personally, but that’s neither here nor there. Especially since it ended up being kind of fortuitous.

Sometime in my early high school years, my mom decided on a whim one day to pick up s powdered chai latte mix at Target (since discontinued, much to our collective despair). Somehow or other I tried a cup. It tasted like liquid cinnamon. It was delicious. It blew my mind and I couldn’t get enough. I remember ordering chai lattes everywhere I went, even though none were quite satisfactory. When Target stopped carrying it, we searched high and low and eventually found a suitable substitute in Trader Joe’s powdered chai latte mix. That tin, to me, became synonymous with “home.”

My junior and senior years of high school I was in a highly accelerated Spanish program. Since the class was so small (two of us my junior year, eight my senior year) and the program unprecedented, we wound up having class in the board meeting room. There were a few tables, a desk for our teacher, and a kitchenette. Mrs. B let us bring snacks and tea, as long as we had enough to share. That was the first time I had anything other than chai. We hadn’t yet discovered the magical TJ’s tin, so my mom armed me with English breakfast and a non-dairy creamer. To this day, my fondest memories of high school are in that room, drinking tea and speaking Spanish with Mrs. B.

Of course my now-obsession with tea grew from there. If someone mentioned a good type I hadn’t tried, I’d end up drinking a cup within a week. Any time I read a character drinking tea in one of my novels, I had to have a matching cup myself. At this point, I collect tea. I am Ramona Flowers.

I collect other accoutrements too. I have no fewer than five different tea infusers, including one in a thermos so I can take my loose tea on the go. I have a different mug for different moods. My favorite purchase to date is my tea timer and thermometer from Teavana, for brewing the loose stuff.

Despite all the trappings, to me, tea is, at its core, comfort. It’s bonding with my mom over something I didn’t even know we would come to have in common. It’s learning Spanish in a revolutionary way with one of my two favorite high school teachers. It’s a pick-me-up when I’m down and a hug when I’m stressed and the one gift to my coworkers that endeared me to them the most. There’s so much I would say about it, but it boils down to one simple statement: I love tea.