I collect and keep treasures, I always have.  Many I have to this day, a few, taken away from me, have disappeared, others were only mine physically for a short while, but remain and continue to grow within me in worth and beauty, some day by day.  Most of the treasures are treasures to me alone, and one day, I know, many are destined for the trash without a thought or qualm to another, but that, in fact, seems the very nature of those things I truly treasure.  For even the physical treasures, they truly only have value and meaning once they reside in the heart, once they have entered the fabric of our being and become not distance echoes, but part of that singing part of our soul, singing of the joys and hurts, hopes and devastations, and the disappointments and the loves, both brilliant and faded, common to our shared human life.  These are the treasures that also uniquely etch our life upon our individual heart and mind, surely encompassing the fingerprints of those who have loved us, and the impressions of who and what we have desired or loved.  These treasures are the only ones we take to the grave that will sing again when we are raised, for they are part of who and what we have become and will remain.

In my study, cluttered and chaotic as it is, I have carefully arranged many of my little treasures upon the small two-drawer chest that sits in the middle, more or less, of this small room.  One of these treasures in my study is an old, very-used, tea leaf strainer that I brought to my study from my mom’s house after she died, now more than seven years ago.  It is so reminiscent of my mom, of our house and family, as I was growing up.  We kept things for a long time, fixing or making do with the results or consequences of whatever was broken, or coming apart, or just needing a little work and imagination to make serviceable, at least enough for our needs.

Now, a tea strainer, my mom being English, was one of the centerpieces of life in our home.  My mom always brewed the family tea in an old and used tin teapot on the stove.  A tin lid from a big box of chocolate cocoa, as I seem to remember, served as the lid.  And, as children, we would have tea in the morning before going to school – my mom even preparing a small thermos of tea for me to drink at school after serving the early 7:00 a.m. mass, for which, thankfully, I was only occasionally scheduled.  And after serving mass, while all the other children would attend the usual 8:00 a.m. mass, I would sit by myself on one of the lunch benches lining the school yard block wall, and I would drink the tea, our English tea always with milk and sugar, and I would eat a sandwich of a fried egg between two buttered slices of bread that my mom also made especially for me when I served an early mass.  And that quiet time was the best part of serving mass at 7:00 a.m., for I loved to sleep and hated getting up an hour early, but the English tea and fried egg sandwich from my mom rewarded the early morning and my time alone on the bench.

We also always had tea in the evening after dinner with dessert, as my dad loved dessert, even if it was a simple rice pudding with raisins mixed-in and cinnamon on top, for when I was young, there being six kids in the family by the time I was ten, it seemed we rarely had money to buy a store-bought dessert.  Dessert was a happy time, a family time, and we would all stay at the table for tea and dessert, sometimes having to wait a bit for the last family member to finish their dinner, usually one of my younger sisters, but never me, as I was always hungry and I gobbled up everything that I could as fast as I could.

I loved dinner, still do, and dessert for me was never as important as it was for my dad.  Having dessert made him happy, and it was a nice thing for him.  I remember watching his face a few times as my mom would bring him his dessert, always first, and his face would light up like a little boy and he would smile and get excited, especially if it was a hot piece of my mom’s deep-dish apple pie, which everyone loved.  With apple pie, my dad would ask for cheddar cheese and he would cut a thick slice and put it on his pie, and let it melt just a bit before eating it, a simple joy for him that I enjoyed watching.

And the tea strainer I saved – rescued really, as some of my sisters are not as sentimental as me about old things, and the strainer was about to end up in the recycle bin – yes, it is old, the metal seemingly stained brown in places, from years of service catching the brewed tea leaves as you poured the tea from the kettle or teapot into a cup.  When you finished pouring the tea, especially if you poured it for multiple cups, a moist mound of tea leaves would build in the tea strainer, the sight always bringing to me quiet memories, peaceful, and even deep, of my early life at home and of my mom, who perhaps also had been deep in memories of Southampton, of her father and mother, London, or the English countryside, as she made and poured our tea at home. 

The tea strainer also had a hole in the metal mesh that caught the tea leaves and, yes, I remember trying to close it up a bit before I poured the tea at my mom’s house for a family gathering.  In my family, it was never good to find tea leaves at the bottom of the cup.  A few were somewhat okay, but more than a few destroyed the quaint Englishness of the moment, making that cup of tea less than an absolute delight.  This transgression against a proper cup of tea, caused by someone not paying attention, or not knowing how to prepare, or pour, or serve English tea, was always an offense and one always noted.  And if noted by my mom, her words were always followed by her family-famous English sniff.  Her English sniff was not to be ignored.

All this is why the old tea strainer from my mom’s house, sits upon the small chest in my study.  A strainer and tea was of my life since I was young, and even now, in the evening, I still have a cuppa.  The strainer is of the life of my larger family, and of the life of my mom for she was English, British to the core and to the end, a symbol of her dutiful devotion to her children – all six of us!

Of course, this little treasure of mine has no intrinsic worth, even very little scrap metal value, but that is the nature of treasures of the heart, true treasures.  The value of this old, stained, and now worn and torn and almost useless strainer, has nothing to do with its current non-effective function, but has everything to do with its past, the hands that held and used it, the meaning that use and those hands had to those who were in some way touched – the small hands around a warm cup of tea on a cold California morning, the joy of tea on Thanksgiving with a real feast of desserts all around, the cup of tea for my mom in the evening during her last months.  And at that time, well, I wasn’t always brewing tea for my mom, but sometimes I just used a teabag in water in the microwave, an abomination to my sisters and even now to my daughters, yes, but easier in the care of my mother.  So, at a certain point in time, my mother’s time, I stopped using the strainer for her.  And the nonuse of the strainer has now also become part of its story, part of the narrative of my mom’s life and of our family’s life.  And perhaps it was then, with the nonuse of the strainer, that it reached the apex of its status as a treasured and honored object, for it now also carries memories of my mom’s last months and days, this old and worn strainer that now resides as a treasure upon the little two-drawer chest that sits in the middle of my study, more or less.

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