It's My Cup of Tea

I like a cup of tea, with milk and sugar.  My favorite is Lipton.  It's a hard cup to order in trendy Portland.  Waiters shoot you a look and recommend something better, from their list of "good teas", and Lipton is never on that list. Usually, I just go home, put the kettle on and brew some myself.

The smell of Lipton tea takes me back to my late, grandmother's kitchen.  She's dealing some gin rummy and we're drinking some Lipton.  She could drink it boiling hot cause she had a tongue like a furnace door.  A Canadian girl, one of eleven kids, Annie Parks Fletcher or Nan, as I called her, made it from Saskatchewan to the orchards of the Hood River Valley where she lived to be 92. Nan could pick fruit all day, drain long golf putts and kick your ass at any card game you might know.  I guess you could call her life rich.  She liked a cup of hot tea too and it was Lipton.