painted on water

The Sacredness of Steam or the Tao of Tea, part 2

Although it’s not a tea, the yerba mate is on my tea shelf, along with the metal straw used to drink it. Along with a scarf that used to smell like him, and a few photographs scattered on my computer, the bitter grindings of this South American plant are the remnants of how I spent my time with my first love. We were both students and strangers in another country, spending our free evenings drinking the highly caffeinated beverage beloved by those in his home country. As we sipped through our metal straws, we would talk, listen to Fairooz, giggle while gazing into each others’ eyes, secretly hold hands under the table and share ourselves with each other. Like all good things, our time together was to come to an end. The night before I left the country, he gave me the straw I used, as well as the rest bag of mate we consumed together. I protested, but he lamented, “Who else will I drink it with?” As we kept in touch through video calls half a world away, he would prepare a glass of mate for himself, and then one for me to recreate the experience again and again. Since he was my only exposure to the drink, he was my sole memory I formed with it, and drank it far less often. I was alone in my childhood room the next time I sipped it through my straw and tiny glass, and tears would become a familiar companion.  The beverage was more bitter than I remembered, and I would never see him again. After a year of being in love, waiting and hoping, countless emails and video calls later, outside pressures ripped us apart. He would eventually find someone else to drink mate with. I haven’t drank it since. Even though we did not get to spend the rest of our lives together as we had hoped, and even though it ended with tears, anger and hurt feelings all around, I have never regretted my time spent with him. He helped me learn how to be myself again, the self that my inner child would recognize once more, and how to see beauty in life in the midst of pain. I do still keep the mate and straw he gave me as a reminder of the happy times we shared together. They remind me that even in the aftermath of the painful breakup, that the end result did not taint the value of the overall experience. It reminds me to not let a potentially painful outcome prevent me from experiencing a possibly wonderful thing, and that is a lesson that I never want to forget.