more tea please

a flock of colors, with tea

Morning dawns chilly. A welcome change, more normal than summer mornings so far this year. I wanted hot tea. Not a mug with a tea bag tossed in, but a pot - an authentic Brown Betty English teapot filled with a good dark black tea. Before the tea shop closed I bought a box of the strong mellow black tea I liked best. It turned out to have a whole story behind it, as part of the price goes to the Royal National Lifeboat Institution that saves lives at sea around the UK and Ireland.

Apparently the founder, Mary Taylor of Cornwall ("Lifeboat Mary"), looks after "her boys" at the lifeboat station with tea and cake and biscuits and has been doing so since she was a girl. So, even though I won't have to save anyone at sea today, nor is it likely that I'll enjoy the goodies that go with the tea (cake and boys), I can drink it and play with tea cozies. And make plans to knit a couple more (I'll check the yarn stash later). I've discovered that writers especially like tea cozies so I'll have some to give to friends by fall.

depth of texture
Why am I writing superficial stuff about teapots and cozies? I know I've waxed poetic about them before. But it's all I can do today as I get back to my desk and begin to pull the necessary details of my life together that were abandoned when our neighbor's son took his life a week ago today.

[when] the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight

each day
dozens of cars have passed back and forth along our dirt road from early morning to late night. It was impossible to distance ourselves from the tragedy. Not only because of the cars and people - which were always within sight from our second floor kitchen windows - but because we care about the family and they seemed to want us to sometimes be there too. We made some food to bring over and attended all the services (at their home) with 150-200 attendees each time. Yesterday under a white tent with a red stripe, against a cloudy blue sky, in intense noon heat, their son's ashes were put to rest on the family's land. Land they've owned for more than 100 years. They are a large and close extended family and I had the strong sense that Floyd was ensconced forever within a snug sphere of love. Today, of course, they face the reality that won't go away when the last of the mourners leave.

return to self
It's not about me, I know that, but profoundly moved yesterday afternoon I sought books for comfort. Poetry, Buddhist teachings, my own writing, and came across John O'Donohue's poem Beannacht (Blessing) from his book of poems, Echoes of Memory. He was an Irish poet priest best known for his book of Celtic wisdom, Anam Cara. All quotes are from the poem.

And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life