{"id":853,"date":"2014-10-22T06:31:38","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T06:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/?p=853"},"modified":"2014-10-22T06:31:38","modified_gmt":"2014-10-22T06:31:38","slug":"ill-be-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/2014\/10\/22\/ill-be-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"I\u2019ll Be Mother"},"content":{"rendered":"

In which there is tea.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Camelia Sinensis<\/em>: (n.), the white-flowered evergreen shrub that is the origin of all teas.\u00a0 Family Theaceae,<\/em> Genus Camelia<\/em>, from the Latinized name of the Reverend Georg Kamel (1661-1706), a Jesuit missionary to the Philippines who made substantial contributions to seventeenth century botany. Sinensis, <\/em>Latin for \u201cfrom China\u201d.<\/p>\n

To my dear reader,<\/p>\n

I sit in Ubiquitous Journey \u2013 a sandwich and tea shop that is my favorite off-campus location in Tacoma \u2013 and after having stumbled upon Keith Souter\u2019s The Tea Cyclopedia: A Celebration of the World\u2019s Favorite Drink<\/em>, I have begun to wonder about the drink.\u00a0 I have Nickelodeon to thank for the beginning of my love of tea, due to my love of the character Iroh in the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender<\/em> and his love for the beverage, but tea has since extended beyond my relationship with that TV show.\u00a0 The complexities of tea fascinate me; the intricacies of its creation are baffling, the delicacy needed to blend it enormous.<\/p>\n

\"1021141730\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are six families of true tea \u2013 white, yellow, oolong, green, black and pu-erh \u2013 of which all are made from the Camelia Sinensis<\/em>, while floral, herbal and fruit teas are delicious falsities, not containing the tea bush\u2019s leaves and therefore not being true teas.\u00a0 Each family of tea has its own creation process and therefore its own distinctive flavor, and all have great health benefit, such as the tumor and apoptosis inhibiting ability of tea\u2019s polyphenols or the antioxidant abilities of tea\u2019s catechins.\u00a0 Tea has been used in all manner of literary adventures, from the Hatter\u2019s tea party in Lewis Carol\u2019s Alice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland<\/em> to the teashop setting of Baroness Orzy\u2019s Old Man in the Corner<\/em>, and tea\u2019s beauty has inspired the lineage of\u00a0tea literature from\u00a0Lu Yu\u2019s Ch\u2019a Ching (The Classic of Tea)<\/em>, c.770, to\u00a0Kakuzo Okakura\u2019s 1911 volume The Book of Tea, <\/em>to\u00a0Keith Souter\u2019s\u00a0<\/span>The Tea Cyclopedia: A Celebration of the World\u2019s Favorite Drink <\/em><\/em>itself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But what interests me most is the use of tea in social interaction.\u00a0 The Taiwanese tea tradition uses the Perennial Tea Ceremony as an opportunity for participants to celebrate the seasons, elements and philosophy together, while the Moroccan tea tradition calls polite conversation over three servings of maghrebi mint tea after dinner.\u00a0 As eighteenth century dining customs changed to suit the increasingly industrial society, and the midday and evening meals grew ever farther apart, afternoon tea was invented to tide the upper classes over and allow for diversionary social interaction in the intervening time.<\/p>\n

I, however, used tea in an enjoyable and completely accidental social interaction between me (as I sat in Ubiquitous Journey) and a fellow Puget Sound student that happened to have stumbled upon the shop.\u00a0 We ordered sandwiches and soup together, and feeling inspired by reading The Tea Cyclopedia, <\/em>I decided that I would offer her a cup of my Hairy Crab Oolong tea.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you tried this one before?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh no,\u201d I replied, \u201cBut that\u2019s part of the adventure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"1021141552a\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is a saying in the United Kingdom, Keith Souter writes, that goes \u201cI\u2019ll be Mother\u201d if one desires to be the one to pour tea for others.\u00a0 There is speculation that this originates from old fertility practices, wherein a woman hoping to conceive would serve drinks unto others as part of a ritual.\u00a0 Whatever the origin of the saying, however, I immediately took a liking to it and, when this friend from Puget Sound reached to pour her own cup, I waved her hand away and said \u201cI\u2019ll be Mother!\u201d<\/p>\n

Something that no one tells you about college is that not only do you must learn to speed to catch up with all the things you must learn, but also must learn to slow down to a rate of life that is healthy and reasonable.\u00a0 Drinking tea, to me, is a purposeful act of slowing down, no matter how rapidly the world is shifting.\u00a0 Drinking tea with another, to me, is an invitation for another to enjoy a moment with just you in just that very moment \u2013 a difficult thing to do.<\/p>\n

As I later learned, \u201cbeing mother\u201d also entails pouring milk into the cups of those that want it, offering sugar cubes rather than a bowl of granulated sugar, and using tongs to lift the cubes.\u00a0 But never mind this, and never mind my inadequate knowledge of tea practices and traditions!\u00a0 For it is a learning process, and one day, I shall be mother indeed.<\/p>\n

With all due respect,<\/p>\n

Daniel Wolfert<\/p>\n

P.S. I highly recommend the Hairy Crab Oolong.\u00a0 It was delicious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In which there is tea. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Camelia Sinensis: (n.), the white-flowered evergreen shrub that is the origin of all teas.\u00a0 Family Theaceae, Genus Camelia, from the Latinized name of the Reverend Georg Kamel (1661-1706), a Jesuit missionary to the Philippines … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":379,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[75,135,134],"class_list":["post-853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daniel-wolfert-16","tag-tacoma","tag-tea","tag-ubiquitous-journey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/379"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":862,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853\/revisions\/862"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.pugetsound.edu\/whatwedo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}