Tea With My Mom.

I need to have tea with my mom. To sit with her, hear wisdom, perspective, and linger. To feel that sense of love and belonging that is only felt within the safety of her space.

I remember a day in March, two and a half years ago. It was the only day, the only time, I can remember doing this. I was so exhausted from teaching, so worn out from life, that I drove after school straight to her Victorian farmhouse home. She walked around the counter, saw me at the door, wiped her hands on her apron, and hugged me. Surprised to see me, it being four in the afternoon, she knew my heart and head were full, tousled.

So she stopped her baking and cooking. Set aside her recipes, her plans, her day, and stood still with me. We stayed in the kitchen for a few minutes. Me, trying to act like everything was fine. But her, knowing to read between the lines of my face and words. And then, she suggested we have tea.

So two cups were stirred, rich tea steaming out the pot, strings like dainty delicacy down the side. And she looked at me, led me to the porch, and I knew she felt my heart, and that I just needed to sit.

The porch was yellow. Sunshine yellow. With big floral patterns in spaces, brown wicker with overstuffed cushions, bright colored settings, and the Front Porches coffee table book I had bought for her a year before. Tea pots hung like lanterns from the walls, birdhouses to be exact, and the new, yet worn cabinet chested cups and saucers and petals and papers.

She settled in across from me, and sighed in her listening, contented, mother-like sound. And waited.

I wanted to act like everything was fine. I wanted to keep it all pulled together. To look and appear perfect and whole. But she knew more. She knew I wouldn't have come here if I wasn't in need of her. If I didn't desire for that mother-heart of hers. That love, that nurture. That holding of me.

And so I started, "I just can't do it all... I'm just so tired inside..." I began to cry, feeling the weight of my heart, and then in guilt began again, "I know people have harder lives than me... I know people are dying today, starving, or raising children on their own..."

I don't remember the rest of this conversation. I just remember her loving me and knowing me and caring about me. But I do I remember one thing she said, one thing that I have held on to. "It's okay. It's okay to feel sad today. Yes, people are dying of disease in Africa. Yes, people are getting divorced and hurting. But that doesn't change that today, you just feel sad and you just feel bad. It's okay."

It was the first time I had ever heard her say that, ever felt her let me be okay with hurting. Ever let me crumble without being strong. But I remember it, I remember the gift of that.

And I remember this day, this tea with mom. This place of rest and safety and love. This place where she walks around corners and smiles, and wipes her apron and sighs, and hugs and bakes and lets me be. This place where I am me, and I am loved, and I am having tea with my mom.