Be sure to heat the earthen pot
And have your water boiling hot
Put in a teaspoon per cup
That each of you intend to sup
Allow to stand for minutes four
Then off the leaves be sure to pour.
When serving put the milk in first,
Add sugar and allay your thirst.
With this delightful, fragrant brew
You’ll be refreshed and live anew.
—OLD SCOTTISH RECIPE FOR MAKING TEA
I HAVE A MASSIVE mug of tea next to me. Tea, as much as it’s about the cup (heavy, delicate, paper, old, handmade), temperature (there really is a moment when hot water cools to a temperature so perfect it feels like a sunrise), flavor, and caffeine, is really an internal nod to my childhood friends. We were forever putting on a kettle—even at age sixteen, and now, decades later, with every cup I drink I feel near to those pals, many of whom don’t live close to me. Inside my psyche, some part of adolescence returns to flop on sofas, smoke stupid cigarettes, talk about boys and teachers.
Most everyone I discuss cozy with instantaneously lifts their pointer finger up in the air and proclaims an undisputable truth about the coziness of the hot drink. My friend Mo said every night growing up, she and her father used to have a cup of hot milk and Ovaltine (a 1970s crumbly, dissolving malt mix) before bed. That memory came out of her mouth so fast it was like she had been waiting her whole life to say it, and then she went on another detailed riff about chai. I think she could have discussed hot liquids for the entire afternoon. It seems for many worldwide, the signet of cozy is a steaming cup.
According to The Atlantic, the country where they drink the most tea, measured in pounds per person, is Turkey, with 6.961 pounds per person per year, followed by Morocco, Ireland, Mauritania, the United Kingdom, Seychelles, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, and number ten, Kazakhstan. They have one of those maps that is shaded where tea-drinking populations are the densest. The United States ranks about halfway through that list. The most frequent coffee drinkers per capita are found in a completely different set of countries. The top five are Finland, Norway, Iceland, Denmark, and the Netherlands.
Thematically, organization and temperature are at play here. If you ever feel lonely, just think about the millions of people standing in front of a stove waiting for water to boil. The Japanese have elaborate tea ceremonies called chanoyu that date back to the sixteenth century; it’s an art form, studied and passed down through generations. But even one person in their kitchen in Staten Island or Moscow has drink-related customs. Mugs, whisks, presses, grinds, tea cozies, kettles, even the folded boxes of Twinings teas connect the entire world with inner well-being.
In Morocco, boiling-hot water infused with sweetened, heady mint is poured from way up high into small glasses. The height is needed to create a foam on the top of the dairy-less tea. The drama of the cascading boiling liquid demonstrates how important the simple act of pouring tea is to the culture.
* * *
IT’S NOT JUST the libation, it’s the vessel. How big or small is your cup? What’s the weight of it? Does it fit in the holder in your car? Is it handmade? My favorite tea mug was purchased on a farm in upstate New York. It has a cow illustrated on its side. Peter and I sought refuge at this working farm with our three very small children one fall day many moons ago. When kids are little, farms are important—especially for city rats like ours. We were always in search of one. Anyway, after we learned about fertilizer and leaned on fences watching cows, there was a small café with egg sandwiches, the eggs provided by the chickens you had just met. That year, they were also selling mugs. I wish I had bought twenty, because they were never for sale again.
There is nothing like the classic New York City blue-and-white deli coffee cup of my youth. But a few years ago, I started drinking coffee solely because of Starbucks holiday cups. I wanted to join the fun-coffee-drink world that appeared to be happening inside those cheery red cups. (Of course, I could’ve ordered tea and gotten the same cup, but it didn’t seem as cool as coffee.) I told a Starbucks barista that story and he said, “Not the first time I’ve heard it happening to people.”
People fall in love over tea, hash ideas, consider their day. My ex-husband and I made a pot of tea to drink while we worked out our financial and custody agreements before we divorced. By the time the pot was done, we had pretty much hammered it out. It was like Earl Grey acted as our mediator. (The only thing my husband Peter knows how to cook is coffee, and he takes it as seriously as doing our taxes. No tea for him, he’s not a tea guy.)
When my grandmother died, she was at a hospital in Burlington, Vermont. Apparently, during her last few hours, she recalled her childhood, telling stories about her parents in Boston, the war, France, art, and the many birds she had painted during her life. I wasn’t close to my grandmother, for no reason other than in Waspy families sometimes formality and physical distance get in the way. But as I age, I feel close to her, and while I have been writing this book I have thought about her often. Granny didn’t have a reputation for being cozy because she was thought of as difficult, remote, cerebral, introverted, and artistic. She wasn’t jolly, effusive, or warm, but that’s the thing about coziness—sometimes it’s not obvious. In my favorite picture of her she’s holding a small bunny, she’s smoking, and she has a cup of tea by her side. From her dirty fingers you can see she had been drawing with pastels.
Granny was a little bit psychic, and no-nonsense. She understood and had animals around her always. She had parrots, and many dogs; at one point there was a raccoon and a small owl that lived in the bookshelf. Once we were all sitting on the porch of her red house on the St. Lawrence River, and a bird flew into the window. It was flailing and dying on the wooden floor. She got up from her wicker chair, reached down, took the bird into her birdlike hands, and broke its neck so it wouldn’t suffer another second.
I don’t think Granny was frightened of death. When she was near the end of her life, my mother was with her and later told me that Granny, during her reflections, softly requested a “small cup of coffee.” That has always stayed with me.
