Tea Party for Two

A friend stayed in our guest room with his four year old daughter this weekend. I came home from church to her smiling face Sunday afternoon. With her blue eyes batting she looked at me and said, "Please Charity! Can we have a tea party?"

At first, I held onto the adult self and explained I had to do dishes from the party the night before and change out of my church clothes... and... I stopped in midsentence. Those pretty blue eyes and cute face turned sad.

I couldn't stand that little sad face.

I found myself digging out my fancy teacups that a friend gave me a long long time ago after a trip he made to Japan. They were elegant and gold tipped but covered in dust. As I washed she stood beside me bouncing on her tiptoes with a towel in hand so she could gingerly dry each one. Her hair swished with her every excited move. Then she exclaimed "We need a teapot! Do you have a teapot?"

So we went teapot hunting and I found one with a dragon and peacock painted on the side. It was an early inheritance gift from my mother. For a moment I caught myself worrying about if it were to break and then I thought, "Think about what it would mean to you when you were her age." and "What the heck else are you going to use it for if not a tea party? Why else would this come into your hands if not to share it in this moment?" So I handed the teapot over to her and she craddled it with both hands as we walked down the stairs to bath it and fill it with iced tea that I had in the fridge.

She proudly set the tea glasses out with the mismatched teapot on the blue carpet in the living room and poured us each a cup. She politely and proudly served me as we sat on the floor (I was still in my long black skirt from church). She sipped for awhile and then said, "We need something to eat with our tea, Charity! What can we eat? We need lots of food for our tea party!"

We left our tea party on the carpet and went diggin again. We filled a crystal platter with Ritz crackers, cherries, M&Ms and veggies (I didn't have any cookies). I also found my sugar bowl and handed it to her with a spoon stating that some people like sugar in their tea.

After getting our spoils together we placed them on the floor with our tea cups and teapot and began nibbling and drinking. Smiling she added sugar to her tea- 3 spoonfulls- while saying, "I don't want to add too much..." and then she licked the spoon and insisted I need to try some sugar too.

In that moment I was faced with the "adult" voice again, "Oh no, she licked the spoon and now wants to spoon me sugar... should I tell her about the rules of etiquette?" and the response, "When did you get so fuddy duddy!? Who cares! Look at the smile on her face!"

I have never had a sweeter cup of tea. Nor do I remember a cooler tea party- not since the one I had when I was about her age. I remembered the back porch, the wooden picnic table whose paint is now almost worn off, and mom bringing us koolaid for us to fill our plastic teacups and sip sip sip until we were sunburnt and cherry-stached.

She and I sipped. We refilled the pot three times and let them sit out way into the evening... or, at least, I did. I let them lay around half filled with tea lines beginning to paint the sides and cherry seeds sticking to crystal... washing them meant the moment was gone and might not have happened. Washing them meant that the tea party was over...and I really didn't want that...

But eventually we washed them and now they sit gleaming and shining on my kitchen table. I don't want to put them away.