The tea pot
I was sitting on the floor in my bedroom, cross legged and still. Sunlight filtered in through the window, shadows cast by the tree outside danced across my small body. I had been crying, but was silent now, cried out. My red eyes were focused on the tree outside, watching it sway back and forth as the wind caught it...And I wondered, why me.
My hand moved to the bandaged cut above my eye, touching it softly.
It hurt, but not as much as I hurt deep within. The cut was just another in a long line of painful cuts and bruises that could never come close to the pain that crushed my heart most days.
Why was I different; Why did I have to be! Why did I have a funny name and skin the colour of caramel! Why could I not have been born normal like the other kids! I raged inside.
At four years old I had been a funny, happy little kid with a cheeky smile, caring nature, the ability to spend time alone content with my Lego, books or some coloured pencils. I was a normal kid.
A year later, after going to school, I had found out I was not normal at all, but some kind of freak to be despised instead.
I found out I was so different that the other kids had to stay away from me, tease me, punch and kick me, hide my school bag or empty its contents all over the ground and kick it around while I tried to gather my things. I was so different no one would play with me and they had to call me names I'd never heard before, bad names I can't repeat. No, I wasn't like them, there was something wrong with me. Why else would they treat me this way, why else was I ostracised.
I heard a noise at the door of my bedroom. My mum.
She had brought me home from school and was looking after me. I'd cried most of the way, as usual. It was funny though, the more the kids hurt me the less I tended to cry these days. I wanted to of course, but I often didn't anymore. My heart was hardening, little by little. When they hit me with sticks and rocks I cried though, like today.
The door opened and my mum came in.
She was carrying a tray as I had expected and on it was two small tea cups, a plate with three cookies and that familiar blue tea pot. I felt better already.
She placed the tray next to me and sank to the floor looking over at me. Her bright blue eyes softened and she raised a snow-white hand to my cheek and pinched it a little just as a small smile touched her face. I leaned my head into her hand a little and she moved it to my chin, sort of cupping it there for a moment, as she continued to hold my gaze.
"Tea?" She said softy?
My eyes brightened a little as she poured a small cup of the weak tea from the familiar blue tea pot and my hand reached out to take a cookie. I was safe.
That was 45 years ago but I recall it like it was yesterday.
As a kid I went from a loving and comforting family-environment into a hostile war zone at school. I was victimised and brutalised for years, because I had a funny name and was a different colour. I grew up in a small country town in the 1970's and I guess that was par for the course for the only brownish kid in school.
I remember being very angry at my parents for sending me there, and myself for being different, however over time I came to accept it as my reality, the abuse I mean, and simply stayed in my own lane at school, tried not to catch anyone's eye and avoid a beating or the emotional abuse when I could.
For me, my childhood stopped when I was at school only resuming when I left to come home and therefore I grew up very quickly, learned my lessons quickly from teachers, the other kids I mean, who instructed with beatings, abuse and racial vilification. I was a kid, but dealing with adult concepts I suppose, to some degree at least.
You will never know what it's like walking through hundreds of kids at school being reviled and despised unless you have experienced it first-hand. - I couldn't even describe it sufficiently for you. I did it though, and survived intact.
It changed me, going through it changed me, and I believe it has helped me build character, to stand on my own two feet, to do what's right and to address those who do wrong to those weaker than themselves. It has brought me understanding of people and their nature, and to hate them, and it has brought me both peace and the ability to be violent...It turned me into me, and I can be nothing but myself. I also came to learn that I was indeed not normal, I was extraordinary; Extraordinarily me, and that was, and is, enough for a person to be.
I still have that tea pot; It's the one in this picture above.
My mum gave it to me in 1996 on the 25th of April. I know that because she wrote a note on paper and placed it inside; It is still there, the note. I'll not tell you what it says because it's private, however one line says how proud of me she was. It makes me tear-up to think of it, even now as I write this and the pot sits beside me.
She passed away on the 13th of April 2004, after a battle with cancer that ended her life rather badly; Almost eight years to the day she handed me that tea pot, and wrote that note.
Having tea from that little tea pot, not much bigger than my adult fist, had been a tradition between my mum and I since around the age of three. I don't recall back that far but certainly remember many times sitting with her, a cookie and that tea pot and how comforting that felt; How safe I felt.
Sometimes we did it just because, and sometimes it was a moment meant to comfort me due to the careless behaviour of the kids at school; Either way, those moments helped centre me and looking at it now I feel the same.
Today is Mothers Day here and we took Faith's mum for a picnic to the Clare Valley. I didn't mention my own mum, but I thought of her, and wondered if she would still be proud of me. I wondered if she knew how important our cups of tea were, and how much I value those memories 45 years later.
Someday I will pass my tea pot on, probably to @smallsteps so hopefully her dad and mum can share moments like I shared with my mum, and the cycle can begin again. Faith and I don't have children of our own, but it would be nice to think the tradition remained in the family.
Happy mothers day to all the mum's (mom's) out there.
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised.
Be well
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