thank you note

“Dear Tee Tee & Uncle (Beloved),

Piper”

This was in the mail yesterday. We’d given Piper a little espresso “suitcase” for Christmas — two tiny espresso cups and saucers, two tiny spoons, all decorated with sprightly French girls, walking their dogs, riding their scooters — and she just FLIPPED for it. We told her it was for “tea.” After that, she spent the whole afternoon walking around with her tea suitcase, sitting with it, hugging it. She simply could not be parted with this new infusion of girliness into her life. She asked my sister, “Mama, do we have any tea?” My sister said no. (Uhm, dear heart, could you please get up and LOOK at least?) So I got up and started rummaging around in the pantry cupboard and — TA DA! — tea. Not the greatest tea, it was some kind of apple spice tea, but Piper didn’t care. She was, you know, “so escited.” As usual.

So I heated some water and made us tea. Then I took some of the chocolate muffins a neighbor had brought over and sliced them into small, tea-cake sized pieces, explaining to Piper that when you have “tea,” you have tiny little cakes and sandwiches that you eat, too. Her eyes were big as saucers, “Really?” “Yup, it’s gonna be good, huh?” “YEAH, Tee Tee!”

Once everything was poured and ready, we sat down and I watched her closely. I watched my niece — who daily has to play rough and tumble with her big brothers as a necessity of survival — suddenly transform into this proper young lady who drinks tea. I mean, she sipped daintily at her cup; she raised a pinky; she changed her voice, calling me “dahling” and “madam” in a vague British accent; she took delicate bites of chocolate muffin — muffin that, just a few hours before, I’d seen smeared all over her flushed and shining cheeks. I didn’t model any of this behavior. She just started doing it. The tea, frankly, tasted flat and old, probably because it was, but she just sipped and murmured with her face close to the cup, “Oooh, Tee Tee. This is soo delicious.”

And it really was, you know?