My Mother Read My Tea Leaves

Tea Reading Symbols

Some time in high school, my mother started a tradition of serving me tea as soon as I got home from school. A formal tea with a silver teapot and china cups. She was Canadian and swore by Red Rose black tea, It was steeped  to be nice and strong, and she always served me sweets. She made the tea with loose leaves were used instead of tea bags, which provided the extra advantage of being readable. And, she told me she knew how to read tea leaves. I was gullible enough to believe this and when I had finished my cup I was to turn it upside down on the saucer, turn it three full rotations to the left and then hand it over to my mother for a reading. The one I remember best was that if a tea leaf was on the edge of the cup, it meant I was going to get a letter. Yes, very likely in those times. What else could she divine from the leaves? She could always find something in the cup that suggested I was in a fight with someone or that something was going on in my love life.

I am the mother of teenaged boys now and we don't share thus tradition. It's hard to read the remains of a bottle of Gatorade and the crusts of a peanut butter and jelly and sandwich.

What she was reading, I now realize, was me. What better way to get a teenager to talk than to fill her up with caffeine and sugar and suggest that interesting things would be coming in the mail or happening with a male.  She got me talking about my life and confiding in her, She achieved the impossible dreams when it comes to teens.

Well played, Lynn Warren, well played.

My mother the tea leaf reader