Another Great Bigelow Tea Constant Comment Story

Tea reminds me of my mother. One of my earliest memories is of getting off the big yellow school bus and coming home to find my mother in her bedroom, waiting for me to tell her about my day, sitting in her chair and watching soap operas as she had her “afternoon tea.” She would have her favorite tea cup full of her favorite tea, Constant Comment — a blue and white cup so big it looked more like a soup bowl — and an open-faced sandwich to go along with it. She was European, and afternoon tea was an important ritual to her — so important that I can remember driving home from a family vacation and my mother insisting that she needed to stop for “high tea,” while my father tried to bring her attention to the fact that we were in the north woods of Canada and tea houses were few and far between. We ended up stopping at a truck stop; I don’t think the “high tea” lived up to my mother’s expectations that day.

My favorite family teatime ritual, however, was our evening tea. Every night around 9 p.m. my parents would brew a pot of tea. They would carry out the steaming cups (my mother’s cup taking up far more than its fair share of space on the tray) along with dishes of ice cream or slices of cake. We would sit together, enjoying our dessert and watching television. My mother would sew or flip through a magazine for awhile, but eventually I would lay my head in her lap and she would scratch my head with one hand as she sipped her tea with the other. I would doze off, sleepy and content, feeling her fingers in my hair, her warm touch conveying her love for me. I’m 29 years old, now, and my mother has been gone for three years. She was the glue that held our family together, and I miss those nights of tea and dessert like I miss sunshine in winter. That big blue cup belongs to me, now. When I take it out and make myself a cup of Constant Comment, I can still feel my mother’s hand on my head, and I feel again her love for me, and suddenly all is right with the world again.

—Erika Holst, Runner Up for Best Story for the Constant Comment Contest