I have what I guess you would call a love/hate relationship with tea. Tea, when I was young, was what mom gave me when I was sick. For a long time, this was a bad thing. I didn’t like what we thought of as tea in middle-class urban 50s America, which was Lipton horrid awful floor-sweepings tea which to me tastes bitter and sour and nasty. But the given wisdom was that you got ginger ale and tea when you were sick. Since I didn’t like the taste, mom doctored it with milk and I think some sugar. Ick. It cuts the taste someone and you have sweetened bitter and sour floor-sweeping. However, it sometimes worked. I had (I might have mentioned in the past) a childhood disease called croup and it was horrible and frightening and it meant I couldn’t breathe. It was treated with humidifiers and hot moist air and I cannot tell you how many mornings of my life I awoke choking and gasping. It went away, but I still retain the scary memories of the illness.

What I also remember is my mother’s amazing ability to cope. She’s either wake up and head into the bathroom where we’d run the shower or whatever and get steam going or she’d take me into the kitchen and say the magic words which were “sit down, and I’ll make you a cup of tea”. I crack up now thinking of that – you know, it’s so mild and Dylan Thomas-y (thinking of the fire brigade and the wacky aunt in Child’s Christmas in Wales but what I remember is calm and steam and making the fear and panic go away with something so mundane.

So I think I’ve written about how I finally learned I liked tea by realizing I drank quarts of it in the Chinese restaurant. But…well…but still I haven’t quite um, warmed to it. I have boxes of tea in the house – mostly for guests, some for making into iced tea – but I’m a confirmed coffee drinker who never tires of coffee. When I’m ill, I try to drink tea based on some old “you’re not supposed to drink milk it creates mucus” old wives’ tale crapola. To be honest, when I’m sick, sometimes stuff tastes funny and I don’t want to ruin the taste of coffee by risking that. Besides, when I’m sick, often it’s an upper respiratory thing and I go back to the steam and the magic of getting a hot drink down and hoping it would break up that GUCK in my head. I can handle tea at a hotter temperature than coffee. But two cups from now, I’m going to be sick to DEATH of tea. I’ve never felt that way about coffee. I’ve never OD’d on coffee while three days of tea-drinking and I’m fed up. I don’t get it.

I’m still suffering from “hotel voice” and laryngitis from two weekends in hotels. It’s also spring and I’m having some allergic stuffy headed reactions to all the lovely flowers and lovely plants and lovely goddam pollen. But suffice it t say my head is still full of cotton, hay and rags and I still am fighting the occasional desire for mom to sit me down and make me a cup of tea.

Here’s what I figured out the other day. After dragging down about five different boxes of Celestial Seasonings this and Lipton’s that and Bigelow this and Twining’s that and even Snapple, with a huge sigh I heated up the water for tea. And I made the tea and slurped it down. And I sort of liked it. Enough that when I went back, I made a second cup using the same box. And it finally came to me.

I don’t really like tea. Well, big huge DUH, huh? I tolerate it for what I believe are its healing or helpful qualities but I don’t like the stuff. Okay, except this one box. Which I blush to admit is Lipton tea. Don’t be ridiculous, I only like the good stuff, right? I have no idea where I got this – probably on mega-sale – and it’s herbal tea by Lipton called something like “lemon soother”. And I can drink a lot of it and like it. For one thing, it’s got strong lemon flavor, so that it actually tastes like something, and I really like lemon. So that at least is helping. Even if my head is still full of cotton hay rags and er, mucus. And my voice is still ducking and weaving and disappearing at rare intervals.

But the truth is, I think, after sliding around this for about four decades the truth is, that while I would like to like it, I really don’t like tea. I think it’s sophisticated to like tea. I would like to like tea. I’ve attended Japanese tea ceremonies several times and appreciate them. I’ve been to some tea rooms and places that serve High Tea and think that’s lovely. I have a secret passion for teapots and would collect them if I had money and space. Truth is, I’m afraid, though, that I don’t really like tea. I just like the idea of tea.