Tea for two

A nice hot cup of tea with steam wafting into the air is the epitome of winding down after a long tiring day.

With so many different types of tea, we can choose from many styles, but they all have the same effect of relaxing the tired body after a hard day, or enjoying quality time with special friends.  Over the years people have got together for cups of tea and shared both joys and sorrows.

To me a cup of tea has another connotation. It goes back to the mid 1930’s when my father was a young man.  He was casually dating a young attractive shop assistant, taking her to local dances and the occasional ball.  Dad and Jenny shared a strong friendship and liked each other a lot, but their friendship didn’t blossom into romance and in time both chose other partners and led fulfilling lives.  When Jenny married, my father attended her wedding and his gift was a teapot. “One day I’ll come and have a cup of tea with you” he promised.

Later my father married and he and my mother ran a mixed fruit property at Renmark in the Riverland area of South Australia, where they raised 4 children: my three brothers and myself, while Jenny and her husband settled in Adelaide and had one son.

Over the years they occasionally met when my parents travelled to Adelaide for business and contact was maintained through a mutual relative.

In her late fifties, my mother developed breast cancer, which unfortunately spread resulting in her death at the age 62.  My father had been devoted to her during her illness and was devastated following her death, but a few months later learnt that Jenny husband had also recently deceased; only a few months before my mother’s death.

He made contact and arranged a visit with her when next in Adelaide.  “I’ve come for that cup of tea,” he jokingly told her when she answered the door.  Instead he chose to have a cup of coffee and they spent several hours chatting, catching up on old times.  As he left he told her he still hadn’t had his cup of tea and would have to come back another time to have his promised cup of tea.  Both were pleased to have regained contact and after several months the friendship blossomed into romance. A year later they were married and had twelve wonderful years together until in 1992 my father died. We are still close to Jenny and she is now a grand old lady of 97, and still very alert.  Once I said to her “Jenny, you could have been my mother, if things had been different,”  “No,” she said, “I was a city girl.  I would never have made a fruit growers wife.”

Robyn King