On Tea Leaves and Plane Tickets

by Lydia Renfro

Tea … is a religion of the art of life.

— Kakuzo Okakura

From my earliest days, tea has been informing my personhood. As a young girl, my mother taught me the ratio for sugar to tea per Oklahoman standards (usually 1 ¼ cups or more for the supper pitcher of iced tea). She shared how long it should steep, how many bags of Luzianne to float in the boiling water before drowning it out with cold and ice.

Within the ritual of preparing the Sunday tea, I developed my own ritual of pushing each bag under the level of steeping water with the wooden spoon reserved for tea making, before knocking said spoon against the inner sides of the container in a frantic, star-shaped motion. When the bags were ready to come out, the cold water ready to add, I used the same spoon to mercilessly squeeze each bag against the side, compelling it to give up any liquid it held, before atoning for this violence by cradling the bag in the hollow of the wood, carried to its final resting place in the trash can. These steps must be done in order, the same way, each time. The serving pitcher, used especially when we had company, mesmerized me with the tiny diamond protrusions creating a cactus-like surface on the glass. The pecan-colored contents sitting so enticingly in the glass vessel were rivaled only by the satisfying, crisp swallows that inevitably followed, as well as the assurance it would continue to be there, week after week. 

Sweet tea meant conversation and good food, community and taking part; it was the promised refreshment after a hot morning of mowing lawns and pulling weeds, the perfect complement to a bowl of evening popcorn. It was the drink of my forefathers and mothers who tilled the prairie soil and scratched a life out of dirt. Tea drew my family members close, reengaged us with the natural world. 

It was at my grandmother’s where I first learned to let tea bags steep not in boiling water, but rest in the sun, letting the hours and daylight brew for us. I felt like I was drinking up the sun itself, a profound sensation for a young girl getting to know herself through her senses. And in the same way, the orange spiced tea my parents would drink in steaming cups when Pop read to my siblings and me each night. The smell of it was taste enough, seasoning the already sacred ritual of words spoken and ideas shared. It’s curious to me, the things that can be instructive to us — if only we pay enough attention and let them. 

When I started my teaching career in Istanbul, I had no idea how serious was cultural tea drinking. My previous relationship with the drink — all gritty sun and Oklahoma — seemed like child’s play in comparison. Turkish black tea, çay, is not simply a refreshment or diversion: it is a right, a necessity, a common thread by which all members of all stations are united. It’s a symbol of friendship and hospitality, not unlike southern pitchers of iced tea. Breakfast does not begin with coffee but with çay. Served in small glasses resembling sand-timers, often with little saucers of red and gold, çay is available in every café, house, ferry, and street corner. Little simit stands litter the docks, offering the beverage for a couple of lira. Just as an American restaurant will bring out water before any ordering begins, I found many Turkish restaurants brought çay either before or after the meal without so much as a query. 

This tea is consumed at every meal, at every type of meeting, and anytime a person might happen to want a drink while sitting next to the Marmara Sea, serenaded by seagulls and charter boats. The black tea, sometimes laced with apple or pomegranate, has solidified itself in my experience as the drink of the people. A çaydanlık, or Turkish teapot, looks like a double kettle — one balanced on top of the other in an Alice in Wonderland aesthetic. The larger pot on the bottom is heated first, and then transferred to the top kettle where the tea is brewed. The bottom then is refilled and both are heated simultaneously. Once ready, hot water from the bottom kettle is poured into tea glasses, diluted to the drinker’s taste by the top kettle containing the tea. From there, two options: light tea, açık çay, or less diluted for a dark and strong taste, çok koyu. The latter is my personal favorite, with the occasional sugar cube tossed in — even miles away from home, still consistent with my history. 

I spent countless happy and lonely moments, sitting with myself or among friends, sipping hot tea, and learning the Turkish rhythms of day-to-day existence. I realized, curiously, that I often felt most present in Istanbul when I was on my own, sitting at a street café in Göztepe, painfully aware of my otherness. When I laughed with friends in the bars and shops along Kadıköy’s snaking walkways, I mentally reanimated the table with my brothers and sisters, repopulated the building with friends playing games or Pop’s boisterous laugh. But I could manage displacement if it was just me. I could see myself as completely alone — and that felt bearable. 

Still, the people of Turkey crowd my memory. I think of Özlem, one of my earliest true friends in Turkey, who first taught me how to make tea —and then, how to be snobby about it. Of Burcu, who loved American rock more than I did and shared çay with me on New Year’s and at her Henna Night. Of Gizem and Murat, who prepared so many breakfasts with me and for me, who taught me how to be an Istanbulite, who became my family. Relationship after relationship bound, forged, and sanctified with çay. If we stopped to think of it, how many bonds can be traced back to food or drink, to stuffs of the earth shared with another person? 

Leaving Turkey proved one of the hardest goodbyes of my life — only further compounded by a difficult adjustment to life in New York immediately afterward. They say the first year is the hardest, and having lived it, I agree. But, as ever, the ability to taste was my saving grace: Colombian rice, paneer, naan, seltzer, street tacos, spiced curry, Thai Kao Phat, $5 slices, mescal, flautas, crepes, eclairs, and of course, tea. New York City’s eternal neighborhoods and endless discoverable places are capable of producing any variety of tea one might be craving at that very moment. Though it’s the first place I drank Boba tea (on the most underwhelming of first dates, I might add), my favorite tea experience in NYC was a chai latte in a small café near Varick Street. The tea itself was ordinary, but the rain and the cinnamon and the blissful security of communing with a comrade all blended together to create one of those sticky-backed memories that aren’t exactly consequential but tracks with you long afterward. 

Again and again, tea has served as my lifeline to others. I enjoyed green tea and avocado toast with Sarah over Thanksgiving break, shared a pot with Rachel at Witches Brew on Long Island, and frequented Starbucks with Michelle too many times to count. My fellow foodie and darling Clara experiences the world much as I do, through her taste, and the most precious hours of my time in NY consisted of talking displacement with her accompanied by eclairs at The French Workshop, popcorn on the streets of Manhattan, croissants in the Village, and tea in paper cups as we sat on park benches. She told me of her love of Turkish tea, how she would often take her family from Romania to Istanbul on small trips, and that shared knowing balanced out the frustration with urine on garbage piles, harassers on the subway, extra shifts at the language center to cover rent, or insufficient funds on a metrocard. That shared knowing buoyed me.

Of course, tea isn’t that one thing we all have in common: in the context of this essay, some people’s tea is perhaps chocolate, or music, or oil paints, or car engines. But to me, tea bridges the divides between place and memory and beyond. On vacation, I remember the teas I drank: the tea with cream in Dubai or the Earl Grey with a scone in chilly Edinburgh. On vacation, my brother remembers the buildings, the architecture of a place. Tea alone isn’t revolutionary (I begrudgingly admit), but the act of sharing tea? Now, that’s a whole different ball game. 

I’ve been fortunate to live all over, my view out the window has changed from woods to prairie to city and back again. I’ve had the pleasure, and distinct challenge, of regional belonging: living among the ordinaries, adhering to the routines as dictated by the place. All the stickiness of where and how one lives, all the little traditions of a specific spot for breakfast on Tuesdays or the favorite scarf that comes out in autumn — these tiny details compose immortality, build these mini universes. 

My family eventually traded the plains for the Rockies, and I’ve since rejoined them in Colorado, in the west that I love so dearly and to which I am most loyal. How to fully describe to you the luxury of sitting with my father on his deck, the clear mountain morning so thin and fresh there can be no doubt as to how alive you are, drinking Irish Breakfast tea and listening to his stories about the prairie? To share tea is to open yourself up to another human, another person who may or may not have had the same experiences or feelings, who may or may not be like you, who challenges or encourages you. To share tea is both terrifying and healing. A cup of tea can change a life. 

— Lydia Renfro is a Staff Writer from the Colorado Front Range.