An Appreciation for Hot Tea

I have to admit that I have never understood coffee drinkers. The bitter taste and stomach aches after trying a sip are definitely a turn off for me. It turns out that I’m actually allergic to coffee, from which my original aversion may stem. Married to a coffee drinker for almost 14 years now, I’ve come to at least appreciate the smell of some coffees. However, my husband’s ultimate satisfaction from drinking coffee has alluded me. Until this year I could say the same about hot tea. Certainly, tea in an iced form was pleasant to the taste buds, but hot tea seemed like such a foreign idea.

That changed last winter when I tasted my first cup of good hot tea. I won’t say that first cup was  a spiritual experience, but it was life changing. Not only had I tried something new, but I began to appreciate and understand something that had once boggled my mind.

Since that time, I’ve become a tea drinker. My husbands chortles at the numerous tins of tea in the cabinet, as he reaches to make his own tea, I might add. Over the summer, when it was too hot for me to drink hot tea, I would make it and let it sit on the counter until it cooled. Now that temperatures are finally, and very thankfully, beginning to drop, I find myself reaching for a cup of hot tea in the mornings. Certainly it warms my body, but I also find it warms my soul. Tea drinking is an experience, one which I can use to center myself, prepare for the day, or chill out with on a stressful afternoon of deadlines. It’s introspective and timeless: an appreciation for life itself.