Since I had not seen my mother in over 8 years, my heart led me home.  You see, we live 14 hours away from each other.  It was just around Christmas time and the weather in West Virginia was getting bleak.  The forecast was calling for heavy snow.  So, just to be close to Mama, I stayed with her at the retirement center instead of in a motel. (I had to sleep on the floor.)

My second night there, the snows came.  We awoke to crisp, beautiful white purity covering everything in sight.  Knowing that we couldn’t go anywhere, we decided to make it as wonderful as we could.

During the three weeks that I spent with Mama, we shared our memories of old times.  We laughed.  We cried, then laughed some more.  All this joy and reminiscing started with a wonderful cup of Earl Grey Tea, just like when I lived at home.  Now, every time I drink a cup of hot tea, wonderful memories of Mama flood my heart with joy.

Cheers to everyone at Bigelow for bringing good teas and wonderful moments; a history that I pass on to my children and my grandchildren.

Sincerely, Sherry

When I was very young, she introduced me to Bigelow’s Constant Comment. The spices and orange flavor made it especially yummy to my young palate.

When I was still in grade school, my mother baked a huge assortment of Christmas cookies every year, and I proudly carried a written invitation to my teacher for afternoon tea and cookies on the last day of school before the holiday break. I would dress in my finest new Christmas dress, and my mother would have the house all decorated, with the dining room table set for just the 3 of us. We would enjoy polite conversation, cookies, and of course, our favorite Constant Comment tea.

I eventually moved away from my home town, and my mother passed away 2 years ago, but I’ll always cherish those “grown up” moments with my mother over cups of Bigelow’s Constant Comment tea.

Louise

Bigelow Tea Drinker

At Bigelow Tea, we truly enjoy hearing from you, our customers–and from tea lovers all over the world! Whether you’re commenting on a blog post, Tweeting about your favorite tea or contributing thoughts on our Facebook page, we are always happy to hear from you. That’s why we’ve decided to post a monthly “thank you” to all our Internet pals!

In December we found our Facebook page hopping with activity! Many tea lovers became our “fans” and entered our exciting sweepstakes. In addition, many grateful customers visited our page to share their love of our teas! Thanks to Barbara Ellen Cornett-Gollwitzer (Spiced Chai tea), Brian Muller (Jasmine Green tea) and Jennifer Palmer (Vanilla Caramel tea) for the shout-outs about their favorite teas!

And there’s tea fan Toby Fauke Smith, who recently expresses his love of Bigelow Teas’ Earl Grey: “It’s my favorite and I’ve tried many including loose leaf tea shop varieties. Bigelow’s is the best!” We admire Toby’s good sense and taste!

This is just a small sample of what you’re saying about Bigelow Tea, and we look forward to highlighting additional conversations in the future. Thanks to all our Facebook fans, Twitter followers, readers and friends for sharing your thoughts, comments, exclamations and compliments with us this month! Happy New Year … and we look forward to connecting with you again throughout the month of January and beyond!

Teacup photo by Cate Sevilla via www.flickr.com

We asked, and they answered! Recently, Bigelow Tea reached out to its faithful Twitter “tweeps” to ask for their top tea tips, and they responded with a plethora of wonderful ideas. Here are a few of our favorites!

@QueenEarlGrey told us her favorite tea tip: warming the tea cup before she starts steeping, to “give you more time to savor you warm cuppa” and it makes her hands nice and toasty! She also suggested mixing your cream and sugar together before pouring in the steeped tea. “It’s a little English secret. Shhhhh.” (Sorry we spilled the beans!)

@LisaKennally offered us two great tips; first, she recommends putting your used tea bags into the fridge, and then placing them on your eyes for treating puffiness. Her second tip was to toss a few chocolate chips in your cup of hot tea, swirl, and enjoy a “sweet” treat! (Yum! We are dying to try this with our Peppermint Herb Tea.)

@OnTimeSupplies told us that replacing that mid-morning/afternoon soda or coffee with Bigelow Tea’s black teas offers the same “pick me up” but gets rid of the “sour stomach” that can accompany those other beverages. Meanwhile, @ChanTeaShop raves about the convenience of using Bigelow Tea for “brewing on the go,” and @lazy_literatus recommended choosing types of tea that steep quickly, like “a nice Darjeeling or a Sencha,” which require two-minute infusions, tops.

Thanks so much to all tea lovers who responded to our query….and if you don’t already follow Bigelow Tea on Twitter, we hope you will…we offer Daily Tea Tips and we truly enjoy engaging with our customers. We’d love to receive your comments!

Photo via Marco Arment on Flickr.com

When I went to college, my mother let me take a big mug with me. I used it once and found it three months later: filled with mold on a top shelf next to my bunk bed. Gross!  Obviously tea wasn’t quite my thing, however, until I studied abroad in Scotland.

In Scotland, I drank tea every day. Multiple cups of tea in fact– with milk, without milk,  but never lemon in Scotland. I met friends out for cups or tea, or had friends ‘round to the flat for tea. I ended up marrying a man from Scotland and stayed. I now have a cup of tea at least three times a day, more if necessary, especially in the winter.

When I first came here, I just had normal tea. I’ve branched out a bit now: Earl Grey, Lady Grey, Peppermint, Spearmint, Green teas. Tea is so much part of life here that when someone visits, you don’t ask if they want something to drink, as in water. You automatically say, “I’ll put the kettle on,” or if you’re on the ball, you’ve already turned it on. Yep—electric kettles are common place here.

When I was home last winter, I had a cup of Constant Comment in my mother’s kitchen, sitting on the same bar stool that I had sat on as a child, and I appreciated that cup of warmth and conversation a wee bit more than I did as a child.

Alice

Living in Scotland via Virginia

By Colleen Hyde

When the Westminster chimes of the grandfather clock in the entry room tolled four o’clock it announced tea time. The library’s long time librarians and antiquarians Mabel and Julia would invite me to tea with them in their office. They always served Constant Comment® tea heated by an electric tea pot that stood amidst stacks of books in the corner of the room. Julia would clear the books off a wooden chair and hand me my porcelain tea cup filled with the steaming tea and a ginger snap cookie on the saucer. They inquired about my parent’s health, and were always eager to know how I was doing in school. Mabel would consult with me about what new children’s books she should order for the library and whether I had any ideas about decorations for next month’s bulletin board in the children’s department.

Over cups of Constant Comment® tea I would learn the art of conversation and the etiquette of sipping tea. I remember the very first time I tried the tea I ran home and demanded that my mother buy some Constant “Comet” tea on her next trip to the grocery store. I soon found out that the tea was not a product of an astronomical event but rather an inspiration to conversation, and that it has always truly been for me with old and new friends to this very day. Mabel and Julia have long since left this world and it seems that I am light-years from those Victorian afternoons spent at the library, but if I close my eyes I can still smell the soothing aroma of the Bigelow tea mixed with the intoxicating scent of the old and new books and I recall the love and nurturing of those two dear friends, never forgotten.

By Janice Safoyan

We have continued this tradition for years, rarely missing a day. Serendipitously, we would discover years later how good for our health all this tea drinking was. Our friendship blossomed, watered by countless cups of Bigelow’s elixir. Once a week perhaps, our conversations would be held face-to-face as we watched our toddlers form their own bonds, ties that exist to this day. We shared our joys and sorrows, career successes and tragic deaths, our children’s accomplishments, our aging parents’ struggles. Often we would look into our cups, trying to read the future in the amber liquid. A tear might drop, sending out waves of fragrant tea, as comforting and timeless as an ocean tide.

Then Maggie moved to Germany. Communication went from verbal to visual. It was pre-internet days, so we resorted to pen and paper. When the blue aerogram envelope arrived, I would restrain myself from ripping it open long enough to brew a cup of “Constant Comment®.” Some traditions simply have to be honored. We are grandmothers now, our lives full of new babies, second careers and madcap projects. Phone calls are few. E-mail serves, in its impersonal way, as the preferred method of communication. In fact, a recent e-mail from me to my dear friend carried the lament that we no longer have time for a tête-à-tête. All those cups of tea nourished the plant that is our friendship. It is time to feed it again.

By Susan Tornga

One afternoon, I had the ultimate in time consuming tasks to perform; washing, combing out tangles, and braiding our Thoroughbred stallion, Miraculus Time’s beautiful thick floor length red chestnut tail. After a trip to the wash rack, I tied him up close to his wall mounted grain bin, grabbed the combs, brushes, and conditioner and put my sports bottle in the grain bin. I started in the front with his mane until I had the last of the tangles free, sipping a few times and replacing the bottle in the bin. Miraculus is a brilliant red, very kind stallion, who follows every move you make with his ears forward and his eyes aglow. I finally got around to going behind him to attack the 4 and a half foot long mass of tangles that comprised his tail. After about 20 minutes he stepped forward a few steps and started making some very strong sniffing noises.

A few minutes later he started rattling things around in his grain bucket with his nose. Since stallions are very curious and mouth around on everything, I thought nothing of it and let him go ahead and enjoy himself. It wasn’t long after that, when I heard some very interesting sounds. It sounded like he was chewing on something and there were definitely gurgling noises. I decided to drop everything and go see what he was doing. Imagine my shock when I found my Constant Comment® bottle with his teeth on the straw drinking my tea!! My straw had teeth marks imbedded in it and he had tea dripping from his muzzle. I laughed until my sides hurt. I guessed that I was the only woman on Earth that had ever shared a mug of Constant Comment® with a REAL STUD!! From then on every time I hold him for a new set of shoes, I set the bottle on the ground beside my director’s chair. Every time he points his nose in that direction, I pour out a handful and he slurps it up and licks my hand (clean!). It really has ruined stallion’s reputations to have one licking your hand that way.

ANNE GEINZER, Constant Comment® Contest Runner Up

If I think about this too much it makes me cry, because Constant Comment is the only tea my grandma ever used. I loved her so very much and I think of her every day – she is my inspiration. I grew up in Northbrook, Illinois and my grandparents were hard working people who did so much for their community. They singlehandedly started the Northbrook speed skating club, and my grandma dyed long johns red for the kids uniforms! My most special and loving memory of drinking this tea was after a speed skating race in the dead cold of a Chicago winter. I can still see it in my mind…when my sisters and I were done skating, we would be freezing cold – our toes and noses almost frost bit. We were so little, 6, 7 & 8 years old. We would skate our hearts out for my grandpa, and when we were done we got to race back to my grandma’s car and get warm. We couldn’t wait! My grandma would be waiting in there, snug and warm and tell us how proud she was of us. Then she would get out her red plaid thermos and pour us a cup of “her” tea. It was so sweet and so warm and went through us like a warm, wonderful blanket. Except this was a warm blanket of love from her, like her outstretched arms to keep us from shivering.

She was so amazing to us all, so gifted and so full of love and adventure and we all adored her so much so this special tea, Constant Comment, was her tea and hers alone. I knew the name – I remember recalling it many times and feeling so privileged to have had it. She made us feel so loved and so adored that surely, anything she did, was special. If Mrs. Bigelow hadn’t created that tea, I know my grandma could have. But the fact she loved it, was enough for me to become a fan for life. When I smell it and close my eyes over that cup of warm, orange aroma, it makes me feel like she is right here with me, wrapping her soft arms around me once again. (This is where my tears fall into the cup!)

As for that Northbrook Speed skating Club, my grandpa put that little town on the map when his team won Olympic medals in Sapporo in 1972. I know that her tea went along on that trip and many others! This tea, “her” tea, my grandma’s favorite tea, is now mine and will be always. I hope that someday my two boys will feel the same love that I do when they smell that aroma and that sweetness and know I am with them in every cup. This tea is like a big warm hug of love from someone very special. It is a little cup from heaven.

Heidi Prom