Soul Food-What I learned from a Teabag on Christmas
I hope everyone had a Happy Holiday, no matter what your faith or beliefs. This year, with so many families not being able to travel or spend holiday time together, I’m sure it was tough on everyone.
I went to my daughter’s for Christmas Eve, and stayed the night, and was there on Christmas as well. We attempted to make homemade pretzels from scratch (OK “I” attempted) which ended up not looking anything like those nice huge pretzels you see in the Mall inside those big warming machines, that keep everything warm. Nonetheless, it was different…
We watched some Holiday movies together, I fell asleep during the Grinch, but did enjoy Elf, which I’ve never seen before. I’m more of a Jimmy Stewart & Donna Reed It’s a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Carol, Scrooge, Miracle on 34th Street, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, in that order. Our tastes in movies have changed over the years, ever since her dad passed eleven years ago, she doesn’t care to watch anything with any type of emotion or which would elicit a tear.
Later on that afternoon, (with no Holiday movie involved whatsoever) we had gotten into a heated debate, which didn’t go well. We had let it go, but my feelings, (which I have a shitload of) were still deeply hurt. We ended up going to bed that night with nothing being resolved (at least I felt that on my end).
The next morning I was packing up my car and had planned on leaving early in the morning.
Then something happened…
I made a cup of tea.
Normally when I stay there I always have a cup of green tea in the morning. However, this particular morning my throat was feeling particularly sore from all the raising of voices that occurred the evening before. Hint: Screaming & yelling for an hour plus will definitely cause a sore throat the next morning, and you don’t need an ear, nose & throat specialist to tell you that.
As I grabbed the box of green tea, I saw the box of Yogi “Throat” tea. Ah, I thought, my lucky day, that’s exactly what the doctor ordered. For those of you who aren’t tea drinkers, or who have never drunk Yogi tea, there’s a quote on each tea bag, (similar to a fortune cookie) and they are all different. I grabbed a teabag from the box, took it out of the wrapper, and read the tea bag…
“In order to be remembered leave nothing behind but love.”
Hmmm, I thought, how time appropriate. I made my tea, while my daughter had run to the store. When she got back I had decided I was going to resolve this in a loving way, so that the both of us could get back to the close bond we’ve always shared. We did and all was well with the world again.
Had the “powers that be” from above not chosen that particular tea bag, I’m not sure how the story would’ve ended. I learned something this Christmas, we came from love, we are love, and from love, we shall return. We need to “be” love. PS It just happened to be the “angel” coffee mug I grabbed from the cupboard also…
Blessings to You,
Eva Starr & Ziggy Starrdust
