For Whom the Tea is Made

To know someone is to know the little things about them—what color they love but would never wear, how they write capital letters, which side of the bed they sleep on.

For the Crochet’s, these little things have defined their marriage for fifty years. Or, more accurately, fifty-one years—today is their anniversary. Mr. Crochet crosses another day off his calendar and pointedly taps today’s date with the end of his marker. It has a shaky heart drawn around the square box. Not that he would forget the day; like a child wouldn’t forget Christmas, but still counts down the days.

He sets the kettle on the stove and starts the coffee. The house groans under his feet, weighed down by decades of stomping around. This morning, his slippers are the only footsteps. The house is used to tiny feet following Mrs. Crochet, or Mr. Crochet’s shifted weight from little ones on his shoulders. The floorboards anticipate more; their creaking is more in question than protest.

Mrs. Crochet likes her tea prepared very specifically. No shop has been able to replicate it. Mr. Crochet is the only one that can do it, besides herself, and she swears it tastes better when someone else makes it. Therefore, Mr. Crochet has spent the better part of fifty-one years steeping her tea. He prefers it that way. He has fallen in love with the quiet motion of making his wife tea before she wakes up.

While the coffee brews, he dunks the tea bag in hot water. After two minutes, he plunges the bag exactly four times to extract the flavor trapped in the leaves. He measures sweet cream in a one-to-three ratio.

Satisfied, he snaps the lid on her bright pink to-go cup and pours coffee in his own matching one. He smiles, remembering when Mrs. Crochet came home with the colorful cup she found at the supermarket. When she washed it later, the sudsy water slipped a second cup stacked on the first. She didn’t know what to do with two pink cups.

“Easy,” Mr. Crochet said. “One for me, one for you!”

“The other one doesn’t even have a lid,” she had protested.

He went to the supermarket the next day and found the missing lid before Mrs. Crochet could return it. When she awoke, he drank coffee from a complete coffee cup. From then on, whenever they left early in the morning, they made sure to have their matching cups in hand.

Before stepping out the door, Mr. Crochet checks his reflection in the entryway mirror. Mrs. Crochet wasn’t home this morning. Mr. Crochet didn’t mind it; he had time to choose an outfit. He wears a simple cap to protect his ears from the harsh January wind. A handmade scarfs hangs below his wrinkled chin.

He hadn’t wanted a winter wedding. But Mrs. Crochet’s mother had grown ill from an aggressive cancer. No one knew how much time she had left. Except for Mrs. Crochet; she always had an innate sense about these things. And so, they married in January. They buried her mother in March.

“Fifty-one years ago,” Mr. Crochet says aloud as he pulls out of the driveway. “Time has certainly flown by.”

In that time, they had three children. All are grown, in their own marriages. It’s funny—every child who liked tea found a coffee drinker, and vice versa. Their only daughter took her coffee strong, and the boys sipped milky tea like their mother. The Crochets wondered if those little quirks were hereditary. Mr. Crochet didn’t think so. His father hated coffee. His mother preferred red wine. Her doctor wrote a prescription for three glasses of red wine a day.

Ironically, Mr. Crochet’s doctors advised he hold off on the coffee. It’s not good for his heart. If his mother survived eighty-four years drinking wine like it was her religion, then he could have his morning brew.

Empty branches shudder in the breeze. Mr. Crochet is the only car on the road. The town has sheltered itself from the cold. Mr. Crochet doesn’t mind leaving the house. It’s somewhat of an anniversary tradition, anyway.

On their fortieth, Mrs. Crochet was called into the hospital for a massive trauma event. She threw on her favorite scrubs, covered in Winnie the Pooh, and kissed Mr. Crochet an apologetic goodbye. She didn’t have time to drink her morning tea.

Mr. Crochet had an idea. He brewed an urn of tea and set it on the nurses’ station. He gave the charge nurse instruction to let everyone on the floor help themselves to the best tea on Earth. He set a card beside it with a simple, Happy Anniversary.

She came home with aching joints and purple eye bags. She threw her arms around her husband and sobbed.

“What’s wrong?” he asked nervously.

“You made that tea for the nurses.” She looked up at him. Her career wore on her, but to Mr. Crochet, she was just as beautiful as the day he first laid eyes on her. “I have nothing to give you.”

He frowned. “You have given me forty years of happiness. What else do I need?”

The closer Mr. Crochet’s car takes him to Mrs. Crochet, the more his heart races. He checks his hair in the rear view mirror. He never understood what she saw in this lanky, awkward man. He was rather plain next to her. He liked to remind her how unfair it was that she blossomed with age while he grew into the grumpy old man on the corner.

He pulls into the parking lot and warms his hands on the pink cups. He is glad they can celebrate this year. They weren’t able to celebrate their fiftieth. Mr. Crochet bought them tickets for an Alaskan cruise. Mrs. Crochet dreamed of watching whales breach from a blue ocean, to see this wonderful world after she retired.

He planned to open her box of tea that morning and pretend the tea had gone bad, and she needed to take a look. There, wedged between the tea bags, would be their tickets. He waited for her to come down from the bedroom. The clock ticked on, well past their routine. Something wasn’t right.

Mrs. Crochet was on the floor beside the bed. She called to him, but her voice was too weak to hear. They went to the hospital. Mrs. Crochet felt awful they had to spend their anniversary in a waiting room. Mr. Crochet joked that it was tradition. He just wanted her to smile. He had forgotten about the tickets waiting in the tea box.

Mrs. Crochet had many attributes handed down from her mother. According to Mrs. Crochet, her father nearly went mad with how much cream her mother added to her coffee. He said they would save a fortune if she just drank cream right from the jug, no coffee required. Mother and daughter, the same taste buds, the same volatile cells mutating in their bones.

He did not tell Mrs. Crochet about the tickets. He threw them away with the Monday morning trash collection. She was too sick to leave the house, let alone go on a cruise. He didn’t want her to know what might have been. Instead, he gave her the endless optimism he reserved for her only. He did not stop making her tea. He would do anything for the woman he loved. Mrs. Crochet let him hover. She had an innate sense about these things.

Mr. Crochet shuts the car door with his foot and starts toward the entrance. The sun warms his rosy cheeks and melts stubborn frost on the yellow grass. He hates winter most days. It just looks so dreary. But he never hated this day. For fifty-one years, this day held a brilliant light. Thank God for their winter wedding.

He finally lays eyes on his wife and chuckles to himself. Why does she still make him feel so nervous, like a boy on his first date? He felt this way standing on her apartment steps all those years ago. He had a fistful of flowers, stems crunched in his grip. She asked him out, of course. Little did she know how badly he wanted to ask her. She took him out of his comfort zone in every way.

He approaches slowly, wearing a sideways grin she adores. He sets the tea in front of her and sits on the ground, unaware of how the cold seeps into his pants. He raises his bright pink cup in the air, then plants a kiss atop the hard granite.

“Happy anniversary,” he says. His sips his coffee and grimaces. He must have burnt the grounds. “How is the tea? I thought about bringing flowers—yes, I know, you don’t like flowers. I was just feeling romantic today, I suppose.”

Her name is like smooth glass on the headstone. The dates of her life are barely visible underneath. He requested it be the smallest part of her memorial. Her life cannot be summarized as a single dash connecting her birth and death.

Mr. Crochet tips his face to the sun. “You still find ways to brighten my world.” He rests against the headstone and watches a funnel of steam escape the tea. It will cool soon. Which is fine. She never liked it too hot, anyway. It is just how she likes.