Serendipi-tea

She keeps waltzing in and out of rooms. I try to keep up with her for a bit, then give up and station myself near the kitchen platform. It’s a Sunday afternoon, I’m sleep-deprived and haven’t had a half-decent cup of chai in a week. Maybe she senses my deprivation. Or maybe that’s how she is, always coming up with the right things to say at the right time.

Would I like some tea, she asks. I nod with the excitement of a boy scout. Would I like some tea? Would the dying like a little serving of life? I follow her into the kitchen. A pack of ginger-lemon tea bags comes out of nowhere. She throws me a few other options but my heart is set on the thought of ginger tea. The aroma of potent ginger that wafts in with a sting, the tang that numbs yet soothes the throat, my mind starts dusting off the afternoon daze. She keeps talking and moving around in a gentle unrehearsed dance. I could get used to this.

‘Should I let it boil some more?’ She asks.

I pretend to be in control as I murmur a yes. Beads of steam form in the water. I’ve been here before but this time, I feel at home. In her busy chatter. In the promise of what’s brewing.

Should she leave the tea bag in the cup? No, I say. She picks it out with a spoon, winds the thread around the spoon and gives it a tug to squeeze out the last bit of goodness. She does that with a deftness that catches me by surprise. How did she do that? And how had that never occurred to me? I’m embarrassed but fortunately, no one needs to know.

We sit back on cushions and talk. A long-forgotten memory revisits. It involves tea, conversations and promises. I brush it off and return to the now. We talk art, cupcakes, school romances, piercings, and her flight the next morning, in no particular order. I feel the tea coursing through my spirits. I forget the revolting heat outside. I think of all the ways I had imagined this afternoon would end. And then I think of my being here, drifting happily in the heady sips of her tea. She smiles at something. She asks me if I’d want to carry a few tea bags with me. I refuse.

I decide I’ll keep coming back to her for more.