Tea Time

If you’ve spent much time with little boys, you probably know they are not quiet, dignified people. Self-discipline is still under development – I mean the boys’. I’m assuming we have already developed ours.

Jean was an energetic child, always on the go. For a time, her forward motion of choice was the cartwheel. It’s not easy trying to make eye contact with a whirling blur on the lawn.

So. It’s not surprising that her two little sons, Samuel, 5, and Uriah, nearly 3, are also high-energy models. Their favorite place to play is in the yard behind their Leesburg, Va. townhouse. They stay in their mother’s view as they dig holes and throw stuff and tussle over toys. They are really good boys, although intervention is occasionally required.

Samuel is, well, loud and excitable. Uriah is a trifle more contemplative.

Both boys seem to be in a growth spurt right now, especially Samuel, and seem unable to get enough to eat. By late afternoon, still too soon for dinner, they want a snack and then another, and another. Jean says it seems all they can think of is food, and she is concerned about the lines blurring between “snack” food and “junk” food.

So. Jean began to serve tea about 4 p.m. Yes, tea. Hot tea. Every afternoon.

She explains: “PG Tea is a British brand I had started drinking before this became a ritual; perhaps it inspired it? I add cold water to Uriah’s. I started out this way for Samuel, but now he knows to wait for it to cool a bit.”

She serves simple little finger foods, tea biscuits, fresh veggies or fruit she has cut up for dinner. On Thursdays it’s likely to derive from fresh bread – she does her week’s bread making on Thursday. And she bakes cookies at least once a week.

“The boys have been outside, and they have to wash up,” Jean says. Attendance varies, but if you’re home, you’re expected to join in. “Isaac [the 15-year-old] is often at work and Uriah is sometimes asleep. But sometimes on Saturdays, we’re all here.”

“Who pours?” I ask, not bearing to consider that they take turns as English children do.

“I usually have their tea ready when I hand it to them with whatever we're eating on the saucer, or sometimes on a separate side plate,” she says.

Dave and I have not yet had the honor of joining them for afternoon tea, and look forward to participating when we spend time with them later this month. It will be interesting to see them change from rough and tumble, and loud voices moderating to quiet, polite speech.

Young children love ritual and are eager to learn new customs. Jean, of course, is teaching them table manners, but apparently they think of it as a new game. Fair enough. They are such imitators, Jean says. “I’m often looking at the mail, or looking through a magazine. Samuel will imitate me to the point of being funny.”

The benefits carry over to the evening meal. “There’s less commotion at dinnertime because they are not starving – plus less commotion when I call them in from outside,” she says.

So. A close call: “When we went camping at a cabin this weekend, I didn't bring tea. Can’t count the number of times Samuel asked about it. And we left a tea kettle on the cabin’s wood cook stove. That added to his angst.”

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Last week’s column challenged you to name food-plants indigenous to this region of the United States when it was being settled. I wrote in Fulfilling the Promise, in 1989:

“Interestingly  the time-honored ‘native’ foods of the region – tomatoes, corn, peanuts, squash – turn out to be immigrants like most Americans. The only authentic natives listed on a genetic treasure map published by the [UGA’s Experiment Station in Griffin] are blueberries, cranberries, Jerusalem artichokes, pecans, sunflowers, wild rice, and wild grapes.”

Just seven.