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My name is Valerie and I have two darling boys named James (5-years) and John (2-years). We had a glorious time today celebrating our first (of MANY) poetry teatimes. Thank you so much for encouraging us to wrap tea and poetry together into a loving and warm embrace. The two truly belong to one another, and my boys and I enjoyed a beautiful afternoon, savoring them both.
Teatime is not altogether new for our boys. I was introduced to the art of tea through a friend who owns and operates a tea company called Tea Embassy. The Tea Embassy used to have a charming storefront in an old, historic home but now they operate exclusively online. I'm just thrilled I can still get their teas! Because of the love affair I've long enjoyed with Tea and because my husband, too is fond of tea, and because we love to share tea with friends, the boys have often enjoyed tea parties together as a family and also with special guests. But the concept of combining poetry with teatime and making it a regularly scheduled event is new to me. I absolutely LOVE it!
Today was a lovely Spring day for us in Texas. It was overcast all day, with refreshingly cool and moist air - so I set our tea table up in the garden, to take advantage of these precious and fleeting days - Texas gets brutally hot and as you know, EVERYTHING is bigger in Texas including the mosquitoes! They haven't taken over our yard YET - so this really was the perfect time to have our tea outside.
I found a really precious Winnie-the-Pooh teapot at Goodwill (! - Can you believe it?!) so it was a natural choice to begin our poetry reading with A.A. Milne. I read from "Now We Are Six" - glad to endear this to my son, James who is five - so that when we can say "Now We are Six" in a few months, he will make the fond connection to this lovely day when we had tea in the garden and read poetry together.
After the tea and lemon curd sandwiches were consumed, both boys cozied up next to me on the outdoor swing and we read poem after poem until their grandfather came to get them so I could start teaching my afternoon piano lessons.
I'm really looking forward to making this a regularly scheduled event that the boys and I can look forward to with eager anticipation. James is still a pre-reader, but I know he will enjoy reading the poems aloud when he is able. And I absolutely adore the idea of encouraging him to write poetry as well.
For now, we will enjoy poetry picture books, and perhaps read a couple without illustrations and ask him to design a picture himself, based on what we read.
Again, thank you, thank you, THANK YOU! This is such a charming idea. And I truly hope and pray that this will ignite in my boys' hearts a deep love for the beauty of language and the timeless treat that is afternoon tea together. Here's to creating memories!
Cheers, my sweet friends!