Sunday Family Stories - I'm a Tea Granny...

I was struck by a flood of memories while I was pouring my tea this morning ... probably because I have started to scan some old family pics now that I've finally hooked up my scanner... but the ritual of having a nice hot cup of tea goes way back into my childhood...

I've been drinking tea (heavily laden with milk) since I could drink out of a cup - its just the way things go in my family... but one of my fave stories from childhood is:

My mom was a Stay At Home Mom with 3 kids under 3 years old - me being the oldest and the bossiest of course... and so I had a standing once a week playdate at my Nana's house so that mom could have a bit of sanity in her world... (who can believe that a mom of 3 toddlers could need sanity...).  It started when my sister (the middle child) was little and continued on after my baby brother (not so little any more) were born... but somewhere in there, I was about 2 ... and I came home from my Nana's house to have a cup of tea with my mom and announced "I only drink tea from a china cup!"  "Nana says tea tastes better in a china cup!" to which my mom promptly announced that I should move in with Nana, because in her house tea came in mugs...

me and my Nana - whose name eventually morphed in to Grandma, 11 years go at my wedding.

Tea is one of the things that all the women in my family share - along with other rich heritage... All of us, the first daughter of a daughter (including my daughter of my heart, Robyn) all share Anne as a middle name.  I have a picture of me, my mom, my Nana and my Great-grandmother - the four Annes as we were called from when I was about 5 years old... (for Mother's Day 1980 as my Nana kindly inscribed the back of the frame)

 As a child, my Nana's house was a wonder - in her basement was a great family room and a closet that was six feet wide and chock full of toys from yesteryear - there was the large plastic dolly (toddler sized) with no hair and no toes who was walked up and down the street in the huge pram that I'd been walked in... barbies from the 50's and 60's and all manner of other great toys... She had a big family style kitchen with a cupboard full of neat instruments of torture... plastic containers, old pots and such that we could pull out and bang at will... there was the living room where you had to be on your best behaviour, with its floral couch, red chair and ottoman, big mirror above the sofa made for making faces in, and the fascinating bunch of grapes lamp that hung over the big red chair... but my two favourite things about being let into the living room were the covered candy dish that was always full of neat things and the end table that stored the memories - photos of all shapes, sizes and descriptions - from baby pictures to wedding albums to birthday celebrations - it was all there behind the doors with the little hooped pulls...

My tea this morning sparked all those memories and more, and what's more, I am currently transcribing my Nana's memoirs for her and learning more and more about the remarkable woman she is... stories I've heard and some I haven't are coming alive... so I dedicate this blog post to my Nana and plan to offer you more insights into my family history over the next several weeks ... so that maybe over time I can build a legacy for my children and grandchildren as strong as the one I am helping to transcribe :)

Thanks for reading,

H.