I have found it. It was 2 dollars at a thrift store. Not only is it perfectly sized, shallow, smooth, perfect weight- it has robin’s egg blue on the INSIDE of the cup. I love that kind of detail.
I haven’t been feeling so great lately, so busy driving kids and working a lot, and missing my friend Kate who passed away in June. I have been so disturbed by politics and all that and find myself losing focus on what I can change vs. what is out of my hands. I have learned how to at least try to take good care of myself over the years and I know when I am getting out of balance and I need to JUST SIT DOWN.
In the hot weather, I pour myself a seltzer in a beautiful pink depression glass tumbler and sit on my porch for a minute or 2. This morning it is about 55 degrees and now that fall is finally making some headway here in Philadelphia, I find myself going for a cup of tea. For a long time when I first got sick with IC, I could not drink black tea or really any tea for a couple of years. I would actually sip on hot water from a tea cup just for the soothing feeling. It helped!
When I was little and would visit my grandmother, she would let me have tea in a tiny china cup with a whole lot of cream. My grandmother was not the most demonstrative and loving of Nanas- she wasn’t on the floor playing Barbies for hours like my mom and mother- in- law did with my daughter. She was born in 1919 and came from a time and world where you did NOT PRAISE children. Over the years, I really came to appreciate her and the complications in her life that made her who she was and the little cups of tea were really something to look forward to, (even if it was probably my mom’s idea to let me have the tea at Nana’s.) As a teenager, I would often have a cup of tea after dinner with my mom when I was still living at home. It always seems like the BEST AND NEWEST IDEA. “Do you want a cup of tea, Deir?” Then we would sit and talk. We still do that. My Katie and I had many cups of tea together. When she was really sick with Leukemia but still at home, she’d ask for the tea and barely drink it but at least we still went through the motions of sharing the time together. She would ask for it with just milk, no honey. I usually would have a cup even if I didn’t especially want it because we could share the moment. It is important to slow down and sipping something hot forces that necessity.
The first tea I delved back into years ago (after the tea hiatus) was green tea, very weak. I will tell you- when you haven’t had it for a while and then you do- you really appreciate the complexity of the flavor with nothing added. Now I am free to enjoy my tea and darn it, it needs to be in a nice cup so hence, the search for the HOLY GRAIL of tea cups.
I have been selling a lot of stuff on my Etsy shop which is very exciting but I also then have been buying things from other sellers. After I found this perfect tea cup, I decided to buy more for myself so I bought a set of 6. Now I have a set of 7 so one is for sale! 🙂 By the way, everyone has their own idea of what makes a tea cup perfect. I even enjoy a cup of tea from an IKEA mug from time to time!