A Tea Party!

I attend­ed a won­der­ful tea par­ty this past weekend—complete with hats and gloves, fun games, inter­est­ing women, a lit­tle poet­ry, and an astound­ing array of deli­cious food—decadent quiche, lit­tle sand­wich­es, sal­ads, scones and treats. The works, I tell ya! (I can’t believe I did­n’t take a pic­ture of the food!) There was also iced tea and hot tea. I had both—it was warm out (we were out­doors in a love­ly gar­den) but I want­ed a chi­na tea cup, so I had hot tea first (gloves on) and then switched to iced tea (gloves off.) I’ve no idea if this was prop­er glove-tea eti­quette or not.

I was invit­ed because of Giant Pump­kin Suite. There’s a Japan­ese tea cer­e­mo­ny in the book and the host won­dered if I would come and talk about it. Now, the Japan­ese tea cer­e­mo­ny is not a tea party—it is, in fact, some­thing else entire­ly. I was­n’t sure I could do it jus­tice speak­ing about it on my own.

So I asked if I could bring my friend Sato­mi who helped me learn about the tea cer­e­mo­ny and end­less­ly advised and proofed for all of the many details.

The night before, I texted Sato­mi and said, “Do you have gloves and hat to wear to the tea party?”

In the morn­ing I woke up to her text: I’m now think­ing about try­ing on my mom’s old kimono that I brought last time I vis­it­ed Japan. Would that be for­mal enough?

It took her an hour to dress. Wear­ing a kimono is not like wear­ing a bathrobe—it is a very intri­cate process to get dressed! Lay­ers and lay­ers, many ties and folds, and more layers—it is not unlike the tea cer­e­mo­ny in terms of process. Beau­ti­ful, slow, full of mean­ing, his­to­ry, and tradition.

I drove with the air-con­di­tion­ing on full-blast so she would­n’t melt before we got there. And I was so glad she came—she spoke so elo­quent­ly about the his­to­ry of the tea cer­e­mo­ny and how it is used today in Japan­ese society.

I am filled with grat­i­tude for Satomi’s help with “Chap­ter 14: The Way Of Tea”—I knew noth­ing about the tea cer­e­mo­ny when we began and she patient­ly walked me through the many details sev­er­al times. It was such an inter­est­ing process to write about. Dif­fi­cult to describe and not make it a six­ty page chap­ter! If you’d like to watch a tea cer­e­mo­ny you can watch here. It is very relaxing!

We had a ball on Sat­ur­day. Thank you to the Minneapolis/St. Paul chap­ter of TTN for a love­ly day!

Also, this is Satomi’s moth­er. My fic­tion­al Mrs. Kiyo is named after her. She lives in Tokyo and Sato­mi says she’s delight­ed with Giant Pump­kin Suite even though she does not read Eng­lish (and it is not yet trans­lat­ed into Japanese!)