May the Force of Tea Be With You

While cleaning out drawers, I found a hand-written note in a greeting card from my dad.

The note:

Megan–

wanting you to write more, here is more tea!
May the Curative Power and Force of Tea be with you.

with all my love,
Dad

The date: 05.17.2013 (that’s how it’s written on the card)

Back then we were one month into the season of life I refer to as the Darkest Timeline. I did not want to write at all, much less write more. But the tagline on my blog back then was, Have tea. Will write, and my dad took me literally.

Praise Jesus.

At that time in 2013, I did not know how to get up in the morning, how to go to sleep, how to stop crying, how to stop ruminating, or how to get my world to stop exploding for 10 seconds, please oh please.

The world did what the world always does. My answer to it, thanks to my dad, was tea: good loose tea.

Dad sent me three kinds from what was then a brick-and-mortar store in Austin, Tea Embassy.

Greenbelt—green tea and green yerba mate with coconut and (best of all) cornflower blossoms
Sterling Silver Needles—white tea leaf buds from China
C.S. Lewis—Irish breakfast tea named for the Belfastian, from Indian Assam

That May I was too manic for more coffee, too depressed for alcoholic treats. Good loose tea loosened goodness in me.

Words followed.

My dad passed away two years ago today, September 11, 2020. When I was emptying his house, next door to me, where he lived for the last two-and-a-half years of his life, I found this:

I didn’t even have to open the bag to feel the curative power and force of tea.