Last year around this time, when the leaves were changing and I’d stopped shaving for the season, the high temperature began to top out in the low 40s.
This can be exciting at first. Makes you want to break out an old peacoat and pretend you’re Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor. But a few weeks of that and you’re cold down to your bones, it’s dark at 5 p.m., and you’re worried about the onset of seasonal depression.
Around that time, a source of mine suggested we meet to discuss a story at Vida pour Tea over on State Street. I’m not against the occasional tea but I have never considered myself a Tea Person.
This is an important distinction.
There are folks out there who can occasionally and casually enjoy a thing. I see them doing it. It looks nice. But my people aren’t built that way. I come from addicts and obsessives.
Did we read that trendy new novel? Enjoyed it so much, we had to read the author’s other twelve books. Even the bad ones.
A cigarette? We’ll see you and raise you a pack-a-day habit for the next 20 years.
After dinner cocktail? Don’t mind if we do…and we’ll leave the car right here in this ditch so we know where to look for it in the morning.
When you’re the kind of guy who has thousands of comic books and hundreds of vinyl records at home, you don’t want to wander into any new hobbies if you can help it. And from the moment I walked into Vida pour Tea, I could tell it was the sort of trap that always gets me.
Will the very smell of the place intoxicate you? Certainly. Will the friendly, skilled, and knowledgeable staff make you a fresh cup of Darjeeling or an I Love Earl Grey A Latte? Of course they will. But while they are doing their magic behind the counter, you will turn around and be confronted by an enormous “Apothecary & Sundries” wall. The loose-leaf teas and special blends will have whimsical and enticing names like “Jasmine Silver Needle,” “Pumpkin Honeybush,” “Saharah Sunset,” and “Sleepy Hollow.”
Do you even know what to do with loose-leaf tea? Aren’t you more of a box-of-tea-bags-from-the-grocery-store sort of person? Well, you don’t have to be. Look around at the books of tea knowledge and lore, the various tools of the trade from the charmingly anachronistic to the technologically cutting-edge.
Did I walk into the shop that first time and, within a month, own a lovely little Moroccan tea set for two, a UtiliTEA variable temperature electric kettle, organic local honey, and bags and boxes of the finest loose-leaf stuff on which I could lay my greedy little hands? Of course I did.
Do I regret it? Not for a minute. I am, even as I type this, sipping some of their delicious Sweet, Spiced Orange, and it is both warming me from the inside and doing wonderful things to my brain. Through the power, I’m sure, of antioxidants, adaptogens, and other things I won’t pretend I really understand. I bought all this stuff. I’m drinking it. Isn’t that enough?
I can only say to you what I say about all of my secret public vices in the sure knowledge you will, like me, ignore the warning completely.
If you’re not hooked, don’t start.