Tea Glass in Smoky Brown

She made her tea with tea leaves.  Lipton maybe, or Louisanne.  I'm not sure which.  Not with bags, but with loose leaves seeped in hot water using a cloth.  Maybe on fancy days she'd use a cheese cloth, but it was tinted dark from using so much it wasn't recognizable as cheese cloth anymore.

The tea had a strong flavor, and was heavily sweetened.  Syrup would have been jealous of the dark water's flavor and sugar content.

I loved it.  I can taste it now, the way it settled on the back of my tongue.  There was usually a pitcher of it in the fridge on any given day, and for Sunday dinners and holidays the tea would flow like oil on Jed Clampitt's land.

On holidays, we used Solo cups.  And names were written on them, and cups were washed and reused.  So it was possible you were using a cup with a name on it, just not your name.  So you just simply remembered the name on your cup this time.  But on any normal day, the glasses were kept in the cabinet to the furthest right.  And the tea glasses had a brown tint to them.

Out of the whole house, if there had ever been any one item in it that would remind me of her, and her very best days, it would have been a tea glass. 

One afternoon I stopped by, and someone had bought for her new drinking glasses.  The old ones were on the counter top, and I took them before I left the house.  I didn't need new drinking glasses.  And to her, they were not something to keep, if she had been given new ones.  But not one to throw anything away, she offered them to someone else.  I took a set of four.  I didn't need them, and they don't hold any magical power.

But I just couldn't let them go.