One brutally cold day in February 2011, a tea time attendee took her seat across the table from me and said “Hm. There is no tea here…” My response was backed by an echo of the following (paraphrased) ”a tea party involves participants, not just tea.” This is, indeed, the case. It is true that the image of ladies gathering for afterwork tea has a different feel than getting drinks after work. Still then, the atmosphere and buildup is different when, despite the beverages, we refer to our gathering as a tea party. So, I do.
Whether we meet at a tea house of sorts or on a patch of grass in one of the city parks, we retain a sort of pride by remembering our status as tea timers. The purpose of tea time is not just to sip tea - though we have generally stuck to this delightful habit - but to meet and represent ourselves on another level, as individuals. Tea represents the leisure we don’t yet have professionally (for the most part) and gives us a chance to conduct ourselves as we feel necessary: confident, excited, vulnerable, confused, happy, or somewhat lost. We can be any combination of things together over tea and everyone has a turn at expressing or even exposing what they will to the others.
There is, theoretically, nothing that would not fit into a conversation of this sort. Holding back is a personal decision and pretending to feel one thing while actually feeling quite differently is not shameful. The anatomy of our tea time is still in the making and I gather that it always will be a mere sketch of the whole.
